Which is harder: The 9-9-9 or the 9-9-6?

Unemployment has been weird to me. Some days I am a little worker bee. Some days I am The Dude. This has never been more evident than a few weekends ago, when I gave blood one morning, then consumed around a billion hot dogs and beers at the White Sox game the next morning, then ran a charity 10k the next morning. You should never do this. You literally shouldn’t even do two of these things in a row. Doing three was a death wish, but it’s fine because I’m unemployed so if I keeled over from sodium poisoning it wouldn’t have any effect on the GDP.

A few of my friends were attempting the 9-9-9 challenge at the White Sox game, which means that they were attempting to eat 9 hot dogs and 9 beers in 9 innings. Because I had given blood and was running the charity 10k in the morning, I told myself I wouldn’t partake. I still had a few more hot dogs and a few more beers than I should, so as not to be a bad sport.

A few days later I flew to Austin for a job interview (it’s none of their business how I spend my weekends) that expected me to work a 9-9-6 schedule. For the uninitiated, that’s 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days per week. I attempted it for one day, during the interview. After fourteen hours— or, realistically, two hours in, after I said “wow, it’s so cool that you get lunch and dinner covered!” and my interviewer cheerfully said “yup, every day but Saturday!”— I realized that lifestyle is likely not for me.

But that got me thinking: how many people have attempted the 9-9-9 and the 9-9-6 in a week? I belong to a select few, if not a sample size of 1. In today’s letter, I’ll use my own experience, plus a little conjecture, to answer the age-old question (that nobody thought to ask until now): which uniquely American challenge is more hellish, the 9-9-6 or the 9-9-9?

You probably won’t die from eating 9 hot dogs and drinking 9 beers, but you will feel worse than you ever thought possible, and test your body in ways you never otherwise would. 9 hot dogs is about 300% of the sodium a person should eat in a day. The hot dogs clock in at around 4500 calories before any condiments, and 9 beers are at least 1000 calories if you’re lucky and they’re light beers. You could choke. You could, of course, do something drunken and irresponsible (but good luck getting drunk with all those hot dog buns sopping up the alcohol.)

When I ran that race the morning after NOT EVEN attempting the 9-9-9, I thought I was going to pass out. I was shooting for 9-minute mile pace, something I’ve done before; this quickly became 9:30; then 10; then just telling myself “as long as I don’t throw up or leave the course in a stretcher.” You are what you eat, and I was hot dog. In the race photos I’m bloated as fuck and look like I’m busting out of my casing. They will never see the light of day. This was one of the more physically taxing things I’ve ever done in my life.

The 999 is really expensive if you’re actually trying it at a ballpark. I know this because when my cheap frugal friends and I tried, we brought a Ziploc full of hot dogs into Rate Field. This is legal to do if you can make the argument that twenty hot dogs is a serving for one person. Not enough people know this.

It is much easier to tell your parents “yeah, I have a new well-paying job where I have to work a lot” than “my friends are trying to eat nine hot dogs and drink nine beers and I am being responsible by doing five and five.”

Theoretically, anyone can do the 9-9-6 if you’re driven enough and bright enough. Man. Woman. Big. Small. Sales. Marketing. Coding. If you’re willing to grind, and you prove yourself, they’re willing to let you grind.

The 9-9-9 is more of a toss-up. You need an alcohol tolerance (though the official rules state that sober people can drink nonalcoholic beers; still not easy with the carbonation.) You need to be big enough that you can realistically stomach nine hot dogs, unless you use some kind of performance enhancer, and I shudder to think what that would look like.

Naturally this favors larger people and men. We need a 9-9-9 women’s league for cool chill guys’ girls who want to get involved!

A sedentary job for a long period of time is much worse for you in the long term than eating 9 hot dogs and drinking 9 beers one time.

If you’re someone who does the 9-9-6, you’re probably some Oura Ring efficiency goblin who’s also training for a marathon after work and never drinks alcohol and everything. If the average person worked 12-hour days at a sedentary job, it would be very bad for them, but the 9-9-6 likely self-selects for freaks who will not let it kill them.

However, I’m trying not to base this argument on the type of person who does either of these things, because it takes a pretty extreme type of person to try either. So scratch that argument. For the average person, for the average amount of time they would do either the 9-9-6 or the 9-9-9, the 9-9-6 is more dangerous.

Credit where it’s due: the 999 isn’t not stressful. It kind of sucks the fun out of America’s favorite pastime1. “How is that true?” you might be asking, as someone who loves drinking beer and eating hot dogs. Yes, this challenge somehow manages to make that scary and stressful.

But, though the 999 is more of a grind than you expect, it still has an end time. The event itself will pass in about 4 hours, and the hangover will pass in a day (or two.)

If you’re doing the 996, you’re working 24/7 with very little healthy work-life balance. You don’t have time to go to some bullshit baseball game. Your job is riding on this; honestly, the success of the entire company is riding on this. There’s an enormous amount of pressure on you. There’s not really an end in sight, either, until you’ve worked hard enough for the company to expand or sell.

Over here in startup land, you’d better be good friends with your coworkers, because you’re not seeing any friends outside of work, or family, or anyone. You’d better come in with a long-term, supportive partner, because you sure as hell won’t have time to date.

On the other hand, even if it does kind of bend towards the “frat hazing” end of the brotherhood-building spectrum, the 9-9-9 is pretty pro-social. You’re ultimately doing something silly that builds bonds with your friends, even if it’s really, really stupid.

It’s really impossible to decide which is more American: binge eating in a challenge built for the feed of a 19-year-old Sigma Chi or being so married to your job you forego all life’s joys in pursuit of mind-boggling wealth.

Please take it from my experience; a normal person, with healthy attitudes towards food and work, will look at you differently if you tell them you attempted the 9-9-9 challenge or considered a job with a 9-9-6 schedule.

Gluttony and greed are two of the big ones, I’m afraid, unless you’re doing the 9-9-6 at the soup kitchen. If I get to the pearly gates and St. Peter brings up the time I brought a Ziploc full of hot dogs into a baseball stadium, I’m turning right back around. I know what I did.

Which would you rather do and why? Is there anything I missed? Is this the stupidest article I’ve ever had or the most genius? I can’t decide. Comment below.