Testosterone Replenishment Theory ©2012 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     I'm going to start off by telling you that everything seems to still work OK, you know, down there. I'm a very privacy-minded individual and I'm only including this disclaimer to quench any prurient curiosity that might have been piqued by the title of today's episode, the reason for which I'll probably meander my way to here in a minute. That's all I'll be serving up about my sex life for now. If you want more on that subject you'll just have to peruse These American Servers After Dark™, my spicy new adult restaurant-centric internet column, set to begin beta testing in late July, 2014. For now, I'll coutinue honoring my pledge to you: that this, the original These American Servers™, remains the most wholesome, family-friendly server blog on the entire motherfucking web!
     ANYWAY, now that we've established what I'm not stressed about, I'll tell ya what does have me majorly worried, and that's up here. I've been scatterbraining at work a lot more than I'm accustomed to here lately and frankly, I'm a little scared. For most of my life now I've yearned for a way to get out of the restaurant business yet still have money. Now I just want to retain enough mental acuity to be able to hang onto my tenuous foothold in the industry.
     Some of y'all might know that at my day job I primarily work Curveside™ To-Go, where clients phone in orders that I bring out to their vehicles. I've been working that position for years, gradually replacing my wait, bar and host shifts with Curveside and, while far from perfect, I've got evidence that I'm pretty good at it. I bust my ass to make sure that my clients get their orders on time and correctly. We get a call or two a week from malcontents who are unhappy with the character of their purchases but that's on the kitchen or the company itself. Several months and sometimes literally years go by between called in complaints about shit that's my fault.
     One day last week I put a Bruschetta Chicken Rigatoni in a bag when it should have been a Southwest Grilled Chicken. The other two-thirds of the order was right. I remember the pair of young, junior executive-type guys who picked it up. We never heard back from them. Perhaps the fuck-up went unnoticed or they didn't care; our rigatoni is real good.
     Then a dude called in two burgers and a sweet tea. He got his proper order but I gave him someone else's similar check for seven dollars more than he should have been charged. I told my boss about it after I realized my error. I volunteered to make up the difference out of my own pocket if she could fix Jones's credit card charge. She tried real hard but couldn't make it happen, which I think is some bullshit on the part of the damn National Cash Register® company. I feel bad about the situation but don't know what else can be done.
     I put the wrong dessert in the sack of chow that I sold to a regular customer who's kind of persnickity but pretty nice and a good tipper. I have her phone number and called it when I realized what had happened and left a voicemail but we haven't heard back from her. I'm mad at myself for screwing up and hope I haven't cost the company a few hundred dollars in annual sales and me some nice tips.
     There've been a few more little brain farts here recently but I can't remember what they were right now, and no, that's not a lame attempt at humor (although I guess it is a little funny). Oh yeah. Now I remember. Three times in the last month my drawer has come up short, each time to the tune of about five or six bucks. My drawers never come up short. If that sounds like a lame pick-up line, well it is, but right now I'm talking about cash handling. Most of my Reaganesque behavior has happened at my day job but early this month at night I was taking care of my three tables I had when my fourth got sat right under my nose and I didn't realize it for several minutes until a co-worker called it to my attention. I blamed the door whores—sorry about that but ya gotta do what ya gotta do—and won the clients over and got a nice tip and all was well but uh-oh!
     ANYHOW, "What's all this got to do with male hormones?" might be the question posed by anyone whose eyes haven't glazed over or wisely clicked the link to Life on a Cocktail Napkin. OK, I'm a kind of regular listener to a late-evening talk radio show called Coast to Coast AM®. The program runs all night and they advertise all kinds of crazy shit on there. Several of their sponsors are currently flogging testosterone like it was a new flavor of Pepsi®. It's not really testosterone, of course. It's some kind of "proprietary blend" that allegedly increases testoserone production in the bodies of men who consume it. The ads mostly claim to boost sexual capabilities and to a lesser extent weight loss but they also promise to increase mental strength and that's right in my wheelhouse just now. It's possible that I got a year's worth of fucking up done in less than a month and that my recent difficulties are just a statistical anomoly. But if they turn out not to be, I might call an 800 number soon and make a purchase. I hope it doesn't come to that, for several reasons, not the least being that right now I can't seem to find my credit card.


     If you're a guy in your 40's (or, really, anybody) and you have some words of wisdom on this subject or want some sympathetic eyes to glom your own forgetful foibles, I'd love to hear from you.