Still, I don't see how you can make that determination unless you were:
A. Rated and trained to the company standards
B. In the cockpit
This reminds me of the thread where the guy was a passenger on a 737 or something and claimed it stalled during cruise. Maybe it is just me, but I try not to criticize other pilots when I don't know the facts.
I understand your objections. I will certainly concede that there may be circumstances of which I'm not aware. Either way, my initial (and subsequent) reaction to what happened stands. It struck me (and the other pilot riding in the back with me), that they had a severe case of "we're really light, let's have some fun".
It might not make a difference in the overall impression from the outside, but part of what put the interpretation (of what they were doing) in my head in the first place was the fact that the gate agent made an announcement prior to boarding that because of the very light load the pilots had informed them that the first six rows would need to be empty for W&B purposes. The agent asked that anyone in those rows come up for a new seat assignment, and said that everyone could basically have a row to themselves if they desired. After boarding the F/A made a similar comment about having our choice of seats if desired because there were so few people on board. I glanced around while moving to an exit row, and made a cursory headcount of about 10 people on board. That initial idea that we were very lightly loaded immediately drove me to think that the guys were having a bit of fun on take-off, rather than being any sort of a standard profile. I know that there weren't any outside factors (obstacle departure or noise abatement procedure) driving the profile because I'd just flown into that airport myself and was familiar.
Just as a reminder, I haven't thrown anyone under the bus here by publishing flight numbers/city pairs, etc.. I'm also not trying to make what they did appear more dramatic than it really was - for example the zoom climb (my interpretation) was fairly short lived - simply a strong pull up followed by a sharp bank. Could it have been something like a maneuver to avoid birds or something similar? Sure it could have - but I sincerely doubt it based on everything leading up to it. Too much circumstantial evidence leading me straight to my conclusion. I'm simply making an observation based on my perception of what happened. Everyone can take from it what they will.