Don't get testy now

What’s that, you say? You want to know why “balls in your coffee,” of all things, was adopted as the moniker for these tales of culinary adventure?

Fair question, and one that I realize needs addressing immediately.

One nondescript night, one when the whole staff was antsy to leave by about 6 p.m. and the minutes were dripping by like something out of a Salvador Dali painting, I seated a party of 12 people in the upstairs dining room. They arrived at a normal dining hour, most likely around 7:30 or so, but by 11, they were still there, and the upstairs server was slowly going insane from boredom.

It didn’t help matters much when the table turned out to be a collection of snobs who treated the server, James, horribly all evening.

Next to this table, there is a room that’s rented out for smaller parties throughout the year. It has it’s own bar set up inside, and shares a wall with the kitchen. When it’s empty, servers tend to congregate inside, waiting for tables, sleeping, bitching, carousing, you name it.

That evening, I wandered into this room, trying to find a server to take a newly sat table, and instead found James, another server Tom, and Rodrigo, one of the bussers, howling with testosterone-charged delight. James and Rodrigo were doubled over laughing.

“And what the hell is going on in here?” I asked Tom over the hysterical bouts of laughter. He was on his way behind the bar, shaking his head and clutching a water pitcher in one hand. James explained that he had more of less had enough with the table and was taking a very personal form of revenge.

Before I could ask what that even meant, I watched as Tom stood behind the bar, unzipped his pants, and daintily…dipped. James and Rodrigo exploded into another fit of hilarity as he zipped up with a stoic and determined look on his face, and left to attend to the table.

My jaw dropped and my eyebrows shot up to the top of my face like some kind of Saturday morning cartoon character, and all thought of the waiting table downstairs disappeared. It took me a shell-shocked moment to join James and Rodrigo at the small window near the table as we watched Tom solemnly refill all the water glasses…and then cringed with perverse joy as the table of evil diners began to take sips one by one.

Let’s just the say the incident occurred some time later with a cup of coffee (a different sensation than cold water, I would imagine) and the perfect twisted rebellion of the act has forever found immortality by entitling this memoir.

And if that, dear reader, hasn’t convinced you to be incredibly nice to every server you ever encounter and tip well for the rest of your life, I’m not sure what will.