SHIPPING AND RECEIVING - BRAD GABOROW

DEATH WISH COFFEE COMPANY EMPLOYEE SERIES #18

"If you ever wanted to do anything other than what you were doing, you had to work a little harder. I've always just assumed that you're going to get where you are by working for it." - Brad Gaborow, Death Wish Coffee Company

PREVIEW:

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW CLICK HERE

ABOUT BRAD GABOROW:

Both Jeff and Dustin have been friends with Brad Gaborow for many years and celebrate his year anniversary of working at Death Wish Coffee by having him on the podcast. Brad talks about how his job has changed since joining the team and how the company has grown, and what it truly means to be part of The Brads. Plus he breaks down some of his favorite hobbies like video games and fishing and they all have some good laughs.

ON THE FUELED BY DEATH COMPANION SHOW:

This week on Science the guys discuss the news from Mars - a massive underground lake of liquid water has been found underneath the south polar ice cap. This discovery could lead to more water being found underneath the red planet's surface. Have you heard about the latest and dangerous viral trend called 'in my feelings' challenge? Jeff and Dustin break down the madness on the roast, and then show some new products and new details about upcoming mug releases from The World's Strongest Coffee Company.

DEATH STAR OF THE WEEK:

Jason Eckert loves having Death Wish Coffee fueling him every day. You can meet Jason in our show this week:

TRANSCRIPT:

Jeff: Did you ever think that you would not only be playing ping pong to the extent of the sport that you play it now or that you'd be doing it also at your job? Did you ever think that would happen to you? Was that ever in the cards for you, Brad?

Brad: I mean, I did think at one point that I was going to be a professional ping pong player.

Dustin: Really? For real?

Brad: No. Not for real.

Dustin: Oh.

Jeff: I like that you went all in on that.

Dustin: You're pretty good.

Brad: I'm okay for a bunch of scrubs at work. I do all right.

Dustin: Hey. Hey. Don't call me a scrub.

Brad: We're all scrubs when it comes to ping pong.

Jeff: I do not ping, nor do I pong.

Brad: No, it's probably for the best.

Dustin: Don't hate the ping, hate the pong.

Jeff: There's no hate. I just don't. There's no hate. Love that you guys all love the pinging and the ponging.

Dustin: You must hate because you never play.

Jeff: No, there's no hate.

Dustin: Why don't you ever play, Jeff?

Jeff: Okay. Full disclosure because it was right outside the door and all I did all day every day was hear that damn ping pong going on. So I had no want to go out there and play ping pong. Now that it's not out there, maybe I will do it. But it's just ... I don't know.

Dustin: So you're like that old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

Jeff: Yes. Yes, I am. They finally got off my lawn. I'm really excited about it.

Brad: We sure did.

Dustin: I think you should give it a go, Jeff. I think you'd be naturally bad at it.

Jeff: I think I would be also naturally bad, for sure.

Brad: We have some people that you can compete with. I promise you.

Jeff: I believe it.

Brad: Kane.

Jeff: I believe it. I love that. Again, I love that ping pong has become such a thing here.

Brad: It's crazy that these guys look forward to their breaks like nothing else because they just want to play ping pong.

Dustin: Ping pong and Magic cards.

Brad: Now they stay late. They like clock out and they go to the ping pong area and they just ping pong for half an hour to an hour.

Dustin: It's beautiful.

Jeff: It was a joke in the beginning, and fans of this podcast will remember when D-man and I started. Right after we started, we started on the crappiest wooden table ever created, and then right after that, Mike and Kane came back with the brand new conference table, which was the damn ping pong table.

Brad: I think that's a great idea.

Jeff: We recorded, what? 10-20 episodes off that table.

Dustin: At least. At least. A lot.
That was a step up from the table that was hot glued together.

Jeff: Totally, and that was in the conference room. So ping pong only happened sporadically if there wasn't a meeting or at the end of the day.

Brad: It must have happened pretty frequently the amount ... The people like the Eric's and the Mike's and the John's.

Jeff: They would stay late. Just like you said.

Dustin: You know how Eric is with games and yogurt parfaits. He can't keep it together, man.

Brad: Flavored Tic-Tacs.

Dustin: Whole packets of Tic-Tacs all at once. Dude, you're not supposed to eat them like that. He's like, "Don't tell me how to eat my Tic-Tacs."

Jeff: We try to tell him.

Dustin: He actually stopped. He's no longer eating Tic-Tacs.

Brad: I haven't seen them with him in a while.

Dustin: Yeah, no. He's reformed now.

Brad: He probably just can't afford it.

Dustin: He found Jesus. He stopped eating Tic-Tacs.

Jeff: Good. Good. Good. That's good.

Dustin: I just want to give some background a little bit because I have a great personal relationship with Brad.

Jeff: Yeah, me too. We've known each other for a very long time.

Dustin: Yeah, you two have known each other for a while but more immediate. Brad and I had worked together in the restaurant industry for a couple years pretty much.

Brad: It seemed lik 20 years, but yeah.

Dustin: You think we'd ever be working together again?

Brad: When you left, no, I didn't. Because you went on to do bigger and better things. But like then when I was finally like, "I need to get the heck out of this kitchen."

Jeff: You can swear. This is Death Wish Coffee.

Brad: "I need to get the fuck out of the kitchen because I'm just tired of it." I text Donovan said, "Hey, you guys hiring?" He was like, "You should just put in a resume."

Dustin: I remember you called me immediately and you was like, "What do you think about hiring Brad?" I was like, "Not only do I think that's a good idea. I want him on the logistics team. Immediately." They're like, "Well, we're going to bring him up in the production. Then we'll slowly move him."

Brad: I'm glad I started down there though, to be honest. I'm glad I got to do the whole thing, start from the bottom.

Dustin: I think there's a lot about that when you start a job and you start at the bottom and you work your way to the top. Not only do you learn more, it feels more accomplishing.

Brad: You feel more valuable when you know how to do more than what you're just hired to do.

Jeff: Yeah. So talk a little bit about your first days here on the job. You were packing k-cups, right?

Brad: I was fortunate. Starting everybody starts packing k-cups. Count to 10 or 50 a thousand times a day or more.

Dustin: It's a pretty mind numbing job.

Brad: It is but after the first I'd say three days, I didn't really mind anymore. I was like this is just what I do for eight hours. It's really not hard.

Dustin: Well, yeah. It's chill. You can listen to any music you want.

Brad: I just listen to music and put cups in a bag. But then I got lucky and other Brad looking out for me. When they needed somebody to go work in the five pound warehouse with Joe, he was like, "You should send Brad over there. He'll tell Joe to get the heck off his phone all the time." So that's what I did, and getting to work over there was way better than packing k-cups. Had to pack five pound bags with Joe, who's all right.

Dustin: Joe's chill. I like Joe.

Brad: Joe's a fucking rad dude, and he really helped me get comfortable in the production side of Death Wish quickly. We had a good thing going over there. So I got lucky. I didn't have to pack cups for that long.

Jeff: And your job has since even evolved further and for those of you who might have heard of us on previous podcasts talk about this, there is an entity at Death Wish Coffee, The Brads, and you are one half of this entity.

Brad: I am. One of us is always angry and the other one always trying to pick up the people that have to deal with the wrath of the other one.

Dustin: And it switches.

Jeff: It switches a lot.

Brad: It switches. I've been the good Brad lately. I don't know what his deal is, but he just likes to yell at anyone who walks through the door. I get a kick out of it, but then I get a kick out of being the nice guy. It's kind of fun. There's a few people that it's the exception he's nice to.

Dustin: I think that's part of a good team, and I felt that happen a lot in a lot of different bands where if the sensible person went over the handlebars, then the person who usually goes over the handlebars becomes the sensible person.

Brad: Someone's got to be that.

Dustin: It's not always like that. That is just the sign of a good team or a goo duo or whatever's going on. You have your yin and your yang and everything goes nicely. So now you went from moving cups and packing bags and now you're full blown on the logistics team. How do you like doing the whole logistics scene of chilling with the trucking?

Jeff: Yeah. What's your daily grind like? What do you have to do?

Brad: Well I basically supply the production team with the supplies and the coffee they need to do their job. Once they finish packing, it comes back to me in packages, and then we wrap the pallets. We put them on trucks or do whatever's got to get done with them. Ship them to whatever platform needs the coffee. I spend probably half my day on a forklift.

Jeff: Yeah. You're going back and forth across the two warehouses a lot.

Brad: Yeah. I don't mind it so much. It is what it is. It's not so bad. You're just driving around on forklift. The only thing I hate is it's smaller quarters and we have a lot of people that just aren't always super aware of their surroundings.

Jeff: Yeah. I walked out in front of the forklift today.

Dustin: Jesus, Jeff.

Brad: When you're on a forklift, your sight is very limited to right in between these bars or to you ...

Dustin: And that's if you don't have a load that completely blocks your sight.

Brad: I did, but it wasn't all the way up. So I could have seen him, but he happened to sneak out at the right time.

Jeff: I ran.

Brad: He's a sneaky son of a bitch. By the time I saw him I was like, "Jeff, announce yourself. Let me see you."

Dustin: You got to be careful. That's it, safety video for Jeff.

Jeff: Safety video for me.

Brad: It's not just Jeff. You're comfortable with where you work. You don't really always think there's a 6,000 pound machine borrowing around. So you guys just have to be cautious.

Dustin: That's the thing. You don't think it's as dangerous as it is. Those forklifts are fucking heavy.

Jeff: They'll kill you.

Brad: You can kill someone very quickly.

Dustin: They will ignore your squishy body like there's nothing there. They will just keep on going through whatever's in the way.

Jeff: I brought this up on many past podcasts, and I'm going to say it again. If you're not following the Instagram account, OSHA, is this okay? Follow that account because not only is it hilarious but it definitely shows you what can really go wrong side of a warehouse sometimes.
So you now really have a lot of responsibility of making sure that not only the production side is running smoothly but then once they're done producing, that all of that is going out. You've been here now ... We're just about to celebrate you here for a full year, which is awesome. So can you talk a little bit about how you've seen the company change since your first day to now, especially with your role. Because, I mean, we're doing a lot more retail. A lot more trucks are coming through.

Brad: When I started, it was still ... I don't know. It's hard to put into words. But the amount the place has changed in the year, equipment wise, staff wise, just job wise, like how much more is happening is quite dramatic. Never quite experienced anything like it. I've worked in Saratoga kitchens where you experience that type of growth every year in June/July gearing up for the track for a month. But on a scale this big and how it's happening constantly. It's pretty neat to see.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brad: Look forward to seeing where it goes from there.

Jeff: Speaking on kitchen work, because we brought this up earlier and Dustin and you were both in a kitchen together. You and I have been in multiple kitchens together. I get this question sometimes too because I was a cook for the better part of two decades, as were you. What kept you going in that industry? What did you enjoy about being a cook?

Brad: Nothing.

Dustin: Nothing by the end of it.

Jeff: It's a good answer.

Brad: The fact of like I knew how to do it and it was ...

Jeff: You were good at it.

Brad: By the time I got up to Esperanto, it was a totally different type of cooking. I wasn't on a line cooking per order. I was just making the stuff so those other guys could do that.

Dustin: You were running the kitchen too. So that becomes a little fun. You get to be a little creative with what you're making.

Brad: The Esperanto thing was just way different. I would've probably tried to get out a lot sooner if it wasn't for working there because that place was a lot of fun to work at.

Dustin: Will is one of the best people in the world. He's awesome to work for. He cares about his people.

Brad: He's a little tough to get riled up sometimes. But he's a genuine dude.

Dustin: Seriously. Yeah, and that's hard to find.

Brad: I still talk to the guy. He's just a man.

Jeff: Do you miss kitchen work at all? Do you miss cooking?

Brad: No. That being said, I do make an appearance down there every now and then, throw on some gloves, and roll some dough boys.

Jeff: Yeah. Oh, boys, now. Yes.

Dustin: Be careful.

Brad: Got to roll the oh, boys.

Jeff: So you still get a little bit of it. That's cool.

Brad: Yeah. If I'm there.

Jeff: Do you find yourself cooking more at home?

Brad: No.

Jeff: No? You know what, I'm the same way. I get that question all the time too. Like do you enjoy cooking?

Brad: No, I'm fucking free. Run.

Jeff: I do enjoy cooking more when I do cook at home, but I don't cook like more. It's not like, "Oh, I'm not doing it for my job anymore." It's like I still eat out, and I still order food.

Brad: We do make dinner at home a lot but I don't go out of my way to make fancy shit.

Jeff: No, I'm with you. I'm with you.

Dustin: So I got to say after working with you for some time and specifically working with you on the team here, there are two qualities of you that stand out to me quite a bit that I respect heavily.

Jeff: Your smell.

Brad: It's a little rough today.

Dustin: The first ones my favorite and I knew that you had this ability coming in here. You don't suffer fools. I really love that. The second one being is that you run towards responsibility. So two questions following that, were you always like that, and where does that come from?

Brad: I don't know. Maybe it's just because I always worked in kitchens and it was always hard work. If you ever wanted to do anything other than what you were doing, you had to work a little harder. I've always just assumed that you're going to get where you are by working for it.

Dustin: A lot of people don't understand that.

Jeff: It is the truth from ... Speaking from kitchen experience, that is inherently, and anybody who's listening or watching who's been in that industry will understand this as well, it's inherently if you don't push for it, you'll never get there. Most people when they start out in a kitchen, start out as a dishwasher or if you're lucky, you're on something like prep or salads. If you want to be a line cook, you have to put the hours in and prove to your head chef I'm worth it to be put behind this line.

Brad: There was more money.

Jeff: There were multiple kitchens that I worked with with Brad that I started out as a dishwasher as he was a cook and I had to push my way up to even being on that line.

Dustin: Well, just to say that mindset in a setting like a small business turning into a big business, man, that is fucking priceless. And I have that mindset too. That's why I'm at where I'm at because you have to fucking work for what you want to get. It's that easy. You just find something that needs to get done and you fucking do it. I've said that 100 times on this show, and I see ... And that's why I like to bring specific people like you and like I think Eric Valentine has a little bit of that mentality too. I love seeing that. But that whole suffer no fools thing. Your parents must have been hardasses or something.

Brad: Yeah. They didn't put up with shit.

Dustin: Yeah. You definitely have that about you.

Jeff: Three boys. Growing up in a house with two parents that don't give shit for shit. I love your mother and father, and both of them are exactly like that. I don't care if you're a fool, get the fuck out of my house.

Brad: If you messed up, they made sure that you knew.

Jeff: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Dustin: Do you find that ever gets you in trouble? You ever cross that line?

Brad: Yeah. Constantly. Because I have a hard time filtering what I feel sometimes. If someone's being a fool ...

Dustin: Don't point at me when ...

Brad: You keep using the word fool, not you. But if someone's being a fool, it's hard for me not speak out. Sometimes I'm not the most ...

Dustin: Some people are made of glass, for sure.

Jeff: Yeah, they are.

Brad: It's gotten me in trouble quite a bit at other jobs.

Dustin: I bet in Vermont it was a hoot too because people are a lot softer in Vermont.

Brad: If I wasn't in the union, I would've been fired 30 times over there.

Dustin: Wow.

Brad: It didn't matter. I would say little things and someone would hear me in a different department. All of a sudden, "Oh, you've got to get your union rep and go to talk to your manager." I'm like, "Son of a bitch. What did I do now?"

Dustin: So do you take effort to kind of keep that in check?

Brad: Yes. Here I do because I like it here.

Dustin: A lot of cool people here. Yeah. Even the people who act foolish, I love them to death.

Brad: No, they're all great. We have really cool team to work with. So I don't want to piss anyone off. I want to be on everyone's good side. Even when they're being whatever, whoever, try not to be too harsh.

Dustin: What do you do to keep that back when you feel it come up and you're like, "I'm going to tell him he's an asshole."

Brad: Go play some ping pong.

Jeff: Yeah. Ping pong, man.

Dustin: That's why you're so good.

Jeff: Keeps everybody sane around here.

Dustin: That's the trick.

Jeff: Now, we've known each other for a while. You've also known a lot of the people who work here. So this is probably an easy question to ascertain the answer to, but when was ... Do you remember when you first heard about Death Wish Coffee as a local?

Brad: Yeah.

Jeff: Can you speak a little bit about that?

Brad: Yeah. Well, I worked at Esperanto for years. When they started, I was working 50 yards away.

Jeff: So you knew right when they were coming out of the basement.

Brad: Yeah, I never really ... I didn't pay much attention because I was always just I stopped at Stewart's, got myself a Stewart's cup of coffee. Did the same thing on my way home. But I just remember it was probably 2012 or 2013, somebody was like, "You got to try Death Wish." Eric, maybe. I was like, "All right. I'll try it." I do remember my very first cup of Death Wish. Drinking about three quarters of it and literally shaking. Being like, "I drank a lot of coffee and I've never felt like this before."

Jeff: Fun story.

Brad: I've never gone back.

Jeff: Fun story. Brad and I live together a couple times actually in various apartments. But there was this one apartment. The one out in Gansevoort.

Brad: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jeff: We both worked nights at a kitchen, and we would get out of work at night and we would have a pot of iced coffee waiting in the fridge, which we would drink until four or five in the morning. But we would brew another pot of coffee so we would have another pot of coffee waiting for us when we woke up in the afternoon/morning-esque to get ready to go to work again.

Dustin: Geez.

Jeff: Yeah. We would not stop drinking coffee. Like a lot of coffee. Yeah. So that's cool that like for someone who's like almost bleeds black brew, if Death Wish actually effected you that way.

Brad: It really did. I freaking drink that shit all the time.

Dustin: You drink a lot of coffee in general.

Brad: Yeah. I've been trying recently to cut back a little.

Dustin: What's your average intake?

Brad: On a work day? Probably like four cups. On the weekend, I'll wake up, make a pot of coffee and drink pretty much the whole thing. Caitlin might have a cup, and then I'll just finish the rest.

Dustin: Wow.

Brad: Sometimes I'll drink some more.

Jeff: Your wife's a coffee drinker too.

Brad: She has like a cup a day. She's a cup a day.

Dustin: When it gets out of hand, how much do you drink?

Brad: It's been a while but I used to have days where I'd just drink it straight until I went to bed.

Dustin: Wow.

Brad: The caffeine just doesn't effect you anymore. You just go right to sleep with coffee in your hand.

Jeff: If we were to get home and not drink coffee, we couldn't go to sleep. We had to literally ingest at least two cups of coffee so we could fall asleep.

Brad: And then play a bunch of video games.

Jeff: Play a bunch of video games.

Brad: Until our brains melted.

Jeff: Yeah. So let's get off of coffee talk then. Let's talk about ...

Dustin: Coffee talk.

Jeff: Coffee talk. What you like to do outside of work? You enjoy a lot of the same things that Dustin and I do.

Brad: Yeah. I mean, I like playing video games.

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Brad: I like camping.

Jeff: You're big into the outdoors.

Brad: Fishing. I like to say I like hiking, but it's been a while so it's hard to say that I like it. But I do.

Jeff: You do.

Brad: It's tough to get out there sometimes.

Jeff: A yearly fishing tournament, right?

Brad: A couple. I have four of them.

Jeff: You do four tournaments?

Brad: Yeah.

Dustin: Really?

Brad: Two ice fishing tournaments and two bass fishing tournaments.

Dustin: How long have you been doing this?

Brad: For a long time. I skipped a bunch of years when I was ...

Jeff: It's you and your dad that do them, right?

Brad: It happens at my father's camp. He's part of a camp that's 10 members, and they do four fishing tournaments a year.

Jeff: Do you like to fish not in the winter, do you like to ice fish? Do you love regular fish or ice fish?

Brad: I prefer regular fishing. It's just little more relaxing. Ice fishing is a lot more work because you're dragging all your shit around. It's freezing. To get your fucking tip ups 20-30 yards away. If your flag goes up, you're running through snow and ice to get there. Unless you have a snowmobile, which I don't have. So it's all on foot. It's a lot of work, but it is fun.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brad: It's a good time.

Dustin: Have you ever won any of the tournaments?

Brad: I've never won first place, no.

Jeff: You place though?

Brad: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah?

Brad: I have placed.

Jeff: Nice.

Brad: But I've never won.

Dustin: Was it a big one?

Brad: No.

Dustin: Just a good show.

Jeff: Is it based on size of fish or mount of fish?

Brad: There's different categories. For like the ice fishing tournaments, it's biggest fish, doesn't matter the species. Biggest fish wins. There might be second or third place prize. The bass fishing tournaments is like the biggest bass by weight wins the tournament. So I haven't caught the biggest bass yet. I've come close. I've never won.

Jeff: Fun fact about Brad is he does four fishing tournaments a year, and he hates eating fish.

Dustin: I was about to ask.

Brad: All right. The spring bass tournament, they do a fish fry. They keep all the pan fish, the sun fish, the rock bass, the not game fish. They keep those and we bring them all back to the camp and they do up a little filet line. They filet them, bread them, fry them. I will eat those fish because I know where they come from. I know the lake they come from.

Jeff: So that's why you don't ...

Brad: Anything from the ocean ...

Jeff: Nope, you don't want to eat it.

Brad: I'm not touching it.

Jeff: All right.

Dustin: Even if you catch it?

Brad: No. First of all, the ocean's just filled with trash.

Jeff: It's true.

Brad: All the fish eat plastic. They're all filled with trash.

Dustin: Oh no.

Brad: I'm not eating anything from there.

Dustin: Doom and gloom.

Brad: It's full of radioactive trash.

Jeff: All right. It's okay.

Dustin: I've learned from comic books that radioactivity's a good thing.

Jeff: Yeah. How are you going to become the Hulk if you don't get a little bit of radioactivity in you?

Dustin: Speaking of the Hulk, where did the ... You have a deep love for the Hulk.

Brad: I don't know. Because he's just so angry and he just wants to be left alone. Got to sympathize with the guy. Kind of understand.

Jeff: We talk to a lot of comic professionals on this show, and we have a lot of connects with comic professionals and side show collectives and that kind of stuff. I've known you through comic circles even outside of our friend circles and stuff like that. Is the Hulk your favorite comic book character of all time? Would you say that?

Brad: Probably.

Jeff: Yeah? Over Green Lantern?

Brad: Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah?

Brad: Yeah.

Dustin: Why do you like Green Lantern?

Jeff: Is it just the green? Do you like things that are green?

Brad: No. The Green Lantern. That was a weird thing. I didn't really read anything DC, but there was a time when they did this ... The Blackest Knight. All the art looked really cool. The colors and everything. So I was like, "I'm going to check it out." It was by a pretty well-known writer, and it happen to be really awesome. I enjoyed it for years.

Jeff: Was that Jeff Johns?

Brad: Yeah. Then when he left the book, he tied up everything very neatly. It came together so well. I kept collecting it after he stopped writing it, but not long. Not that they weren't doing a good job, I just wasn't invested anymore. I'm more invested in the Marvel Universe overall anyway. So I just kind of ... Hulk's my guy though.

Jeff: Hulk's your guy.

Dustin: So you're a hater of everything pop culture. What do you think of the new Marvel movies?

Brad: I don't mind them. I think they're pretty good.

Dustin: Yeah. What do you think of the Deadpool movies?

Brad: I think the Deadpool movies are right on.

Dustin: Nice. Okay. Good.

Brad: They're fantastic.

Jeff: As of recording this episode, it is official that Disney bought Fox so Deadpool is part of the Disney camp now. So not 100% like in the next year, but in the next few years, we'll definitely see Deadpool, X-Men, Fantastic Four all interact with the Avengers. So that'll be a lot of fun.

Dustin: I would like to see a Deadpool and Wolverine movie.

Jeff: We might get it.

Dustin: How cool would that be? How cool? Were they able to do that before the Fox deal?

Jeff: Well, yeah. Because Fox owns Deadpool and X-Men. So they could've done it. But they just didn't get around to it because they were telling their own story with Wolverine.

Brad: They put Deadpool in the Wolverine movie. Do you remember? That one ...

Jeff: Oh yeah. That's right, I forgot.

Brad: They took the Merc With The Mouth mouth off.

Dustin: Oh, I forgot about that. That was pre-Disney, right?

Jeff: That was pre-everything. That was pre even Fox understanding what they had. Like yeah.

Dustin: Oh, man. That was terrible.

Jeff: Yeah. We'll see where that kind of stuff goes. But it's exciting to be a nerd in this timeframe.

Dustin: It really is. It really is. We get the best things. The games. Games are so good.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dustin: If I go back in time and see my younger self, that's what I'd be like, "Dude, the games get awesome. Just hang in there." The games really awesome.

Jeff: You're going to love what's coming.

Dustin: Especially the RPG action genre they have done really fucking amazing things with that.

Brad: Games just don't die now. You can play them for years. You don't just beat it and be like, "Cool. I beat it." You can keep fucking playing.

Dustin: It's another fucking universe.

Jeff: Yeah. Let's talk about video games because you are a big gamer, and you've been that way as long as I've known you. We've been since kids playing games, and like you said, I mean, a game that came out in 2011 was Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. I'm sure a lot of you guys probably know about that game too.

Dustin: That was 2011?

Jeff: I still haven't put it down. I still from time to time put it on and play that game. So games are timeless at this point because they're so great. What are some either genres or games that you just can't put down?

Brad: Pretty much just ...

Jeff: Action RPGs?

Brad: No. Loot shooters.

Jeff: Loot shooters.

Brad: Yeah, where you just try to get loot. Try to get better gear. Like Destiny, Borderlands.

Jeff: Borderlands, you like.

Brad: Yeah, shit like that. It's just a grind of trying to get cooler shit.

Jeff: Were you into the Mass Effect games at all?

Brad: Fuck yeah. The Mass Effect games were fantastic. The first one, whatever. People hate it. I kind of hate it.

Jeff: But that was the same kind of idea where you're just constantly leveling up your gear and leveling up everything.

Brad: That one kind of had a story.

Dustin: It was pretty linear.

Brad: Yeah. There was a multiplayer. You could do that.

Dustin: It was more like an interactive sci-fi movie the first one was. The first one was less of a level of you character, build characters.

Brad: Second one was a little bit more building and shit. The third one was fucking awesome.

Dustin: I thought the storyline on the first one was the best though.

Brad: Probably.

Dustin: You're like, "I don't care about storylines."

Brad: No, no, no. The story in Mass Effect series was amazing the first three games.

Jeff: When we were younger, I mean, Final Fantasy was everything. We played all the Final Fantasies forever. Are you still an RPG fan at all?

Brad: I feel like RPGs, I don't know what happened. I just don't have the fucking patience for them anymore.

Jeff: I hear you.

Brad: There's too much talk to somebody, run do something, talk to somebody. It's just like there's too much shit they put on you to do. Like you don't have to do a lot of it. I get that. It's a lot of side quest nonsense. But I like to do as much as I can in a game. So I just get bogged down with all that shit. So much recent RPGs I just don't have the love for them like I used to. They're too open ended. I know people want the open world experience and I understand that, but with those, there's no real direction. You can just do whatever the fuck you want. I don't know. I feel like I want something to work for.

Jeff: There's a fine line that's crossed a lot. Like I mentioned, Skyrim. I think they do a really good job with those games. I think they do a good job with the Fallout games. A lesser, more action RPG is like the God of War series or Assassin's Creed I think does a really good job. But like, again, going back to like our go to, which was Final Fantasy for years, I haven't liked a Final Fantasy in years. I've tried. I try every single new one that comes out, and I feel the same way. It's like I don't have the patience to slog through all of this.

Brad: Yeah. I mean, Final Fantasy 15 has a lot of really cool stuff about it.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brad: But just like with all those other games, the Skyrims and the Fallouts, I felt like the repetitiveness was just too much to bare. I get the same thing with Destiny from time to time. But at least with games like that, the variance changes with who you play with and what activities you're doing. There's so much more you can do depending on your team, all that stuff, not to mention PVP. But with the other games, it gets a little repetitive.

Dustin: Yeah. Games almost become too realistic where it's like this is not even an escape. I'm just doing more work.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dustin: I'm playing video games to get out of work. To just get home and relax. Not just like keep on mercing. But I like all those.

Brad: I get it. I love Fallout 3, and don't ask me why I couldn't get into Fallout 4, but I just couldn't.

Dustin: What about New Vegas?

Brad: I hated that one.

Dustin: Fucking Christ, man.

Jeff: You loved it. I know.

Brad: I know a couple of people that really loved it.

Jeff: I think New Vegas might be my favorite just because I love that whole casino/gambling mecca in the middle of a post-apocalyptic world, all the bright lights, and garbage mixed together. I thought that was a really cool dichotomy situation.

Brad: I thought it was going to be awesome too. That's around the time I was just like I can't do this anymore. I need more variance in my combat. A game like Skyrim, I feel like I would love that game if the combat as Dark Souls.

Dustin: I never played Dark Souls.

Jeff: You loved Dark Souls.

Brad: Dark Souls is like the combats very engaging and very strategic. Where as like I'm not trying to knock Skyrim, but like doing this over and over again is really fucking repetitive.

Dustin: Yeah.

Brad: And I know people like that because there's a grind to that game. I get that RPG grind. If you're into that shit, those games are awesome. But it's not what I'm into anymore.

Jeff: Speaking on games though, I do want to throw this out here. Something we've been trying to develop here at Death Wish Coffee that you are going to be a huge part of is our Twitch stream.

Brad: It's so hard to find the time.

Jeff: It is hard to find the time. We are going to get better at it. Twitch.tv/deathwishcoffee.

Dustin: We will get better at video games. I promise.

Jeff: We're just going to get better at playing them. But I definitely want to play ... Have you play more because you play a lot of games. I want to have you play the games that you like. One of the games I love watching Brad play is that Friday The 13th Game. We get to be Jason and kill campers, which is awesome. Or you get to be the campers running away from Jason. But is there any games coming out by the end of 2018 that you're really you can't wait for? Is there anything that's on the horizon?

Brad: Not that I can think of other than just Destiny Expansion.

Dustin: Destiny Expansion. Yes.

Brad: Which is basically going to make Destiny another game.

Jeff: That's, again, a cool thing about the future that we live in. Go back to Nintendo it's like Mario came out. Everyone's like, "Mario's amazing," and then they came out with Mario 2 and it was like, "Cool. I got to go out and buy this next game, which I'm going to love because I love this first platform." Now we have games that are like, "Oh, you like this game, here's more of the game." Now a couple months later it's like, "You like more of that, here's more of ..." t's awesome.

Dustin: Yeah. I got to ask and I think for me it works particularly well working in the logistics field. Do you find that video games have built a skill that you're using now at work?

Brad: Managing inventory.

Dustin: Yes.

Jeff: Yeah.

Brad: That's a real thing in a lot of these games.

Dustin: And it translates. I really believe ...

Brad: I don't know if I learned it from the video games or from jobs or vice versa.

Dustin: Or if you just have a love for dealing with inventories.

Brad: Yeah. That's why I love collecting comic books.

Jeff: Again, watching Brad play Final Fantasy when we were younger, it would be, and I love doing it too, but I would love to watch him just sit in his inventory and be like, "Okay. This armor's going to go up here. Put this gauntlet next to this stuff. Make sure that ..." Everything's sorted and in it's place. It's like, "Okay. Now I can go fight something."

Dustin: If you're that type of person, get into logistics.

Jeff: Right. Yeah, exactly.

Dustin: It just makes sense, and I never in my mind and you're probably the same way thought I would ever be logistician.

Jeff: Right.

Brad: Logistician.

Dustin: It's a word.

Brad: I believe you. I love how it sounds though.

Dustin: Now that I'm here working that side of things, it makes sense. It's like, "Oh. I should've been here a while ago."

Jeff: Yeah.

Brad: Starting to order for Esperanto's doing all the ordering and stuff kind of came easy. I could look at what I had and what do I need. It all does. You're right. It does translate to job to video game, from video game to your job.

Dustin: It's real.

Jeff: See, mom. Video games are helpful.

Dustin: Fuck you, mom.

Jeff: So through it all, Brad, going through the years in the kitchen industry and now making sure that this company is working right on a day to day basis, and also all of the hobbies that you love to do, being outside, fishing, and video games and stuff like that. What fuels you to keep doing it all? What fuels you to keep doing it?

Dustin: What makes Brad tick?

Brad: It doesn't take much. I don't really ... I live day to day, moment to moment kind of. I don't really like to make plans because I often forget that I make them and then I get in trouble. So I just live from day to day.

Jeff: You just live in the moment.

Brad: Yeah, more or less.

Jeff: That's a great answer.

Dustin: What a Ronan.

Jeff: Yeah. You are a Ronan. For sure.

Brad: I hate making plans because, like I said, I always freaking forget them.

Dustin: What gives you ...

Jeff: That's what you have a wife for. To remember those plans.

Dustin: What gives you the biggest rush of dopamine? What's the thing ... You ever catch yourself doing a thing and you're like, "Oh, I love what I'm doing right now."

Brad: Yeah. I mean, fishing, catching like a fucking big fish after a long day, it always feels awesome. Or beating a fucking boss in a game gives you a particularly hard time, that feels fucking awesome.

Dustin: Or mercying Kane in ping pong.

Brad: Mercying Kane in ping pong.

Dustin: That's got to feel so good. That had to feel awesome.

Brad: The second time felt just as good as the first.

Dustin: Yeah. Because he gave him a drubbing the second time too.

Jeff: That's awesome.

Dustin: It wasn't luck. You just suck today.

Brad: It's really weird because he's a really good ping pong player.

Jeff: He is.

Brad: Most of the time he's my nightmare on that table, but recently he's ...

Dustin: But he's a nightmare because he's so temperamental. He's always smashing things. It's a double edge sword, man, that no control can get out of control sometimes.

Jeff: It's the truth. It's the truth.

Brad: He's a good ponger though.

Jeff: So back on Death Wish Coffee. You've been here for a year and you've obviously known about the company since it's inception. Is there anything that you haven't seen this company try or do that you think we should try for? Is there any kind of ... Is there something that we ... A piece of merchandise we haven't made or maybe like an industry we haven't really tapped into yet?

Brad: I think the gaming industry. The huge one that we could tap into.

Jeff: I agree. That's why I want to have ...

Brad: We should have that truck down at E3. We should have that truck at these big gaming conferences.

Jeff: I agree because gamers stay up all night.

Brad: All fucking night.

Dustin: You said it yourself, that's what you guys used to do.

Brad: Yeah.

Dustin: If Death Wish Coffee was around when you guys were coming home ...

Jeff: We would've drank a helluva lot less coffee.

Dustin: There's that, but you would've gone straight for Death Wish Coffee.

Jeff: Definitely.

Dustin: That would've been your go-to. You would have put all the stickers on all your controllers.

Jeff: Definitely.

Dustin: Everything. You would have all your Xboxes would have a Death Wish Coffee sticker.

Jeff: This is to date us, but this was either PlayStation One or Two or a Nintendo GameCube.

Brad: Hell yeah. That was the GameCube days for sure.

Dustin: I miss N64, man.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dustin: Those are some of the best games.

Jeff: Yeah. That was the great thing about the GameCube is down the side of the game cube, you could plug in your N64 controllers and play N64 games on the GameCube. That was awesome.

Dustin: Oh, that's kind of cool.

Jeff: Yeah. That was a cool little system.

Dustin: Ocarina of Time.

Jeff: Yes.

Dustin: Sign me up, man.

Jeff: I wasted so many hours with that game.

Dustin: I must have beaten that 18 times. I found every little missing treasure.

Jeff: He's never been a Zelda fan.

Dustin: You didn't like it?

Jeff: No, he's never been a Zelda fan.

Brad: I liked the first one.

Jeff: Yeah, the original.

Brad: The second one made me so mad that I never wanted to play again.

Dustin: The second one was so hard. It was ridiculous.

Brad: I hated it so much. I never wanted to play again.

Dustin: But it looked so cool. Why did it look so cool? As a kid, that was the best. Man, I want to go back in time so bad and just tell my kid self, "Just wait for the video games, man. It's going to get so crazy."

Brad: When you're in your 30's, it's going to be incredible.

Jeff: Speaking of, and I'll end this with the video game talk, but speaking of like games that are coming out, one that I'm excited about that I'm sure you two will probably be excited about too. Square Enix, which is the company that made all the Final Fantasy games.

Brad: You talking about the Marvel one?

Jeff: Has partnered with Marvel. We don't know when it's coming out yet. But we are getting an action RPG centered around the Marvel Universe but that's very Final Fantasy-esque. So I think for a lot of our likes ...

Dustin: Hit or miss, man. I don't know.

Jeff: But it could be awesome.

Dustin: Yeah. That's the problem when you like something so much that if somebody fucks it up even a little, you're like no, bad.

Jeff: No, I get that. I get that too. Okay, Brad, final question then, Death Wish or Valhalla?

Brad: All right. Death Wish iced, Valhalla hot.

Jeff: Really? Whoa. Okay. Is there a reason behind ...

Dustin: You were ready for this question. I like that.

Brad: He told me he'll end it with this. But no, it's true. I love iced Death Wish. I drink it hot too obviously.

Jeff: but you like it cold better.

Brad: For some reason I just love iced Death Wish.

Dustin: Tastes a little bit like chocolate.

Brad: It goes down real smooth. But Valhalla is just, it's a really flavorful cup of coffee.

Dustin: It's got nice layers to it.

Brad: Yeah. It's got a lot of layers. It's a good weekend coffee. I drink that one on weekends.

Dustin: It's a good weekend coffee. That's our new motto.

Jeff: It's a new tagline.

Dustin: Valhalla Java, it's a good weekend coffee. We'll tell Zakk Wylde that.

Jeff: We'll tell Zakk to say that out loud.

Brad: It tastes great, man. It's good through a Chem-X, it's good through the drip. Doesn't matter how you make it.

Dustin: All right.

Brad: They're both good.

Dustin: That's awesome.

Jeff: Well ...

Dustin: Last Of The Jedi on Instagram.

Jeff: Last Of The Jedi. I'll put that on here. Oh yeah, on Xbox for those of you who are out there and Destiny fans can find you killing monsters.

Dustin: Pretty soon he'll be part of the FleshClappers.

Brad: Probably going to happen.

Jeff: Oh my goodness.

Brad: Sorry, Fenix. I'm changing.

Jeff: Man, I've said it a couple times on this show already. We've been friends for a very long time, and I'm looking forward to the rest of our lives being friends. It was really great to have you on the show.

Dustin: Are you guys going to make out?

Jeff: Yeah. We'll make out.

Dustin: Can I join in?

Jeff: No. But yeah, man, it's great that not only have we been friends for so long, but we get to work in the same place and crush it for a company as cool as Death Wish Coffee.

Brad: Work with some of my best friends, it's amazing.

Dustin: That makes me believe more and more that life is a simulation.

Jeff: Yeah. Thank you to the matrix.

Dustin: We are in a simulation right now because it just seems ... I'm just blown away by how fucking lucky we are. All these chumps and we've known each other for so long just being chumps all the time.

Brad: It started luck with Mike and Eric and Kane.

Jeff: You're right.

Brad: It's not lucky for you fucking took it, and you came here, you grab it, and you fucking took it for yourself.

Jeff: It's true.

Brad: But yes, you're fortunate. I wouldn't consider it lucky.

Dustin: You're going to make me blush.

Brad: I don't think we're not lucky.

Jeff: We work hard to continue to caffeinate the word. That's the deal.

Dustin: I work hard my whole life and you can work jobs that just fucking suck. I worked hard at Esperanto. I worked hard in the dental lab, and it was nothing like what we have here.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dustin: It's just too cool. I'm forever fucking grateful, and I'm so glad you're fucking here, my dude.

Jeff: Hell yeah. Hell yeah.