The workplace war over iced lattes is not about coffee

• By Beth Kowitt / Bloomberg Opinion

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Is it acceptable to bring an iced coffee to a job interview?

This seemingly mundane question has somehow consumed various corners of the Internet, taking over social media feeds and group chats. Bloomberg Opinion is not immune. Not since the great shorts-in-the-office firestorm of 2024 has a workplace debate lit up our team’s Slack channel quite like this one.

What started the so-called iced-coffee discourse was a viral TikTok from corporate recruiter Caitlin Wehniainen, who also posts advice for job seekers on social media. In her video, Wehniainen said that younger candidates are showing up at job interviews with iced coffee, which to her reads as treating the interview like a “stop on your list of errands for the day.”

Her advice: “Don’t waltz into your interview all casual with an iced coffee,” adding: “It just looks like you didn’t have time to finish your coffee beforehand.”

I am not the first to say it, but the heated debate that has followed is not really about iced coffee. The very nature of work is in flux right now, with artificial intelligence (AI) accelerating the deepening structural shifts. Employers and their young employees are caught in a power struggle over who gets to decide the norms of this new workplace. Iced coffee is just the latest proxy for that tension — how each party feels both misunderstood and deep anxiety about their place in this evolving landscape.

To bosses from older generations, bringing an iced coffee to a job interview can signal either a complete lack of understanding of the workplace’s unwritten rules or, perhaps even worse, an unwillingness to play by them. Either interpretation reinforces the existing stereotypes that bosses have about Gen Z workers: They are unprofessional, unprepared, unmotivated and difficult to manage.

An iced coffee takes on outsized weight when many traditional cues of the hiring process have become obsolete. Applying for a job has turned into an AI doom loop: Candidates are using AI to write their resumes and cover letters, which are then assessed by AI to make sure they match the AI-written job description. That has raised the stakes of the in-person interview — the ultimate vibe check in the AI era. The logic is that if a prospective hire cannot get along and go along when it matters most, what other would they refuse to follow and conform to?

This comes at a moment when corporate America is highly attuned to signs of defiance, and management is working overtime to tamp down on any hints of rebellion in the workplace. As I have written before, bosses are in their command-and-control era. They are reclaiming their authority by quashing dissent, increasing surveillance and cutting benefits. They are controlling how workers express their personal views even when they are off the clock and demanding they return to the office five days a week.

Meanwhile, much of Gen Z is not having it. This is a generation that grew up with regular school shootings, came of age during a climate crisis and lived through a global pandemic — experiences that have eroded their trust in major institutions and what they view as arbitrary rules. Their desire to set boundaries and refusal to blindly accept marching orders can look to older managers like entitlement or insubordination. Gen Z’ers are launching careers at time when they are constantly being told AI might eliminate the jobs they desire. Against that backdrop, how could an iced coffee possibly matter? Instead, it just projects elitism and lazy gatekeeping.

It is worth remembering that not very long ago, job seekers were advised to cover up their tattoos in job interviews and scrub their resumes of clues as to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Obviously, an iced coffee is not nearly the same thing, but it is a reminder that norms around professionalism change and evolve. In the case of tattoos and identity, it was Gen X and millennials who helped rid the workplace of what they viewed as its outdated rules. Now that many of them are the ones doing the hiring, they might want to remember that and give a little grace the next time a Gen Z candidate waltzes in with an iced coffee.

Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America. She was previously a senior writer and editor at Fortune magazine. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.