Showing up to a job interview with an iced coffee… Gen Z “Is that such a big deal?”
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“I came for an interview; is it such a big deal that I brought an iced coffee?” A quirky debate has erupted in the United States. The question is whether you may walk into a job interview carrying coffee. It began with a TikTok video posted by a recruiter. They said they have recently often seen Gen Z applicants enter interview rooms with an iced coffee or iced latte in hand, adding that “an applicant may come across as overly casual.” Gen Z viewers pushed back, flooding the video with rebuttals such as “The interview is only one part of my day.”
The issue of bringing coffee to an interview has widened into a clash over workplace culture between Gen Z and older generations in the West. The Guardian in the UK dubbed the debate the ‘Great Iced Coffee Debate’, and the Washington Post in the United States called it “an explosive debate over iced coffee.”
The controversy began with a TikTok video by Kaitlin Weniainen, who runs a recruiting firm in Florida in the United States. She has worked in recruiting for 16 years and said she mainly works with ‘Fortune 500’ companies, the top 500 U.S. firms ranked by revenue by the U.S. business magazine ‘Fortune’. On TikTok, Weniainen said, “At quite a few of the companies where I recruit, Gen Z applicants come to interviews holding an iced coffee or iced latte.”
What she flagged was not the coffee itself. Bringing a drink into the interview room, she said, could give the impression that the interview is being taken too lightly. Weniainen explained, “From the interviewer perspective, it can look like the applicant stopped by Starbucks, then went to a mall, and then treated the interview as a brief stop on the day schedule.” The interview can look less like the important appointment of the day and more like ‘one item on a to-do list’. She advised drinking iced coffee before or after the interview.
As the video resurfaced in mid-September, it drew an explosive response. Comments included, “An interview is only one part of my day,” “Do I have to clear the entire day for a 30-minute interview,” and “I cannot tell whether companies are hiring people or robots.” On the other hand, there were also views such as, “If you cannot even forgo coffee for about 30 minutes, that is the bigger problem,” and “Shaping a strong first impression in an interview is part of job performance.”
As the debate grew, Weniainen posted a follow-up on LinkedIn. After reading thousands of comments, she said it seemed as if the question she had raised stopped at ‘Is it acceptable to bring coffee into an interview room’. What she had wanted to say was not that a cup of coffee should serve as a yardstick for evaluating ability or character. Because workplace culture and interview atmospheres differ by company, she had tried to point out that something an applicant does without much thought can land differently with an interviewer. She wrote, “Showing up with coffee does not mean someone is a bad candidate,” adding that one role of recruiters is to help candidates understand how they may be perceived in the environments where they are applying.
In fact, even among U.S. recruiting and etiquette experts, opinions are divided. Covering the debate, the U.S. outlet the Huffington Post presented views from traditional etiquette specialists. Diane Gottsman, founder of the business-etiquette training institute ‘Protocol School of Texas’ in Texas, said that whether hot coffee or iced coffee, carrying it directly into an interview is hard to regard as professional behavior. You are supposed to focus on making a strong first impression on the interviewer, she said, and walking in with a drink can make it look less like a formal, important setting and more like a casual chat. She also cited the risk that your hand will not be free for a handshake because you are drinking coffee, or that condensation from the cup will leave rings on the desk.
Jackie Vernon Thompson, founder of the etiquette institute ‘From the Inside-Out School of Etiquette’, said, “In an interview, you should act professionally regardless of the level of the role,” and, “Even if office culture is more relaxed than before, an interview is a formal setting where a candidate presents themself.” Etiquette expert Nick Leighton focused on the symbolism of beverages. He argued that for the 30 minutes or so of an interview, the meeting should look like the most important thing for the applicant that day, and that walking in with coffee or an overly large water bottle can suggest it is ‘just one item on the day schedule’.
However, different voices are heard in the recruiting industry. Fortune recently covered the debate and introduced opinions from hiring professionals. Trent Cotton, who leads talent insights at the recruiting software company iCIMS, said a cup of coffee should not become a more important criterion than an applicant ability. He argued that both a glass of water and a cup of coffee are beverages commonly provided in interview rooms, and that a candidate should not be less likely to be hired simply because they brought one. Rather, if you reject strong candidates for such a reason, he said, you are ‘clinging excessively to trivialities’.
In the same article, Ashley Doherty, a market lead at the recruiting firm Randstad Professional, said, “This is not about coffee but about who defines ‘professionalism’.” Megan Slabinski, a regional lead at Robert Half, said she does not recommend iced coffee, but thought it was unlikely that one thing alone would decide an interview outcome. Conversation with the interviewer, communication skills, and the expertise required for the role are far more important criteria, she said.
There are also experts who represent the Gen Z viewpoint. The business outlet Business Insider introduced the view of Collin Batchelder, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of the consulting firm Indivity. Batchelder saw the controversy not as a problem caused by Gen Z being rude, but as a difference across generations in what counts as ‘normal workplace behavior’. “For Gen Z, bringing an iced coffee to an interview is not a sign of rudeness; it is simply the act of drinking a beverage,” he said, adding, “What matters is whether the candidate is prepared for the interview, stays focused on the conversation, and respects the time of the interviewer.” He also pointed out that if iced coffee truly rises to the level of something that would affect hiring, that should be stated in the interview instructions in advance.
Hiring expert Bonnie Dilber wrote on her LinkedIn that while she herself would not carry an iced coffee into an interview, she would find it hard to articulate exactly why. The reason, she suggested, may be the ‘unspoken rules’ that exist in U.S. corporate culture. There are rules that people absorb naturally by watching those around them, even if no one explicitly teaches what behavior is appropriate in interviews, and people who have had fewer chances to encounter such tacit rules may judge the same behavior differently.
Dilber also saw a problem with using such tacit rules as hidden criteria for hiring. If a recruiter wants to reject a candidate simply because they brought iced coffee, that judgment itself deserves a second look, and if a company truly does not permit beverages, it is better to state that clearly to applicants at the interview-guidance stage.
A single iced Americano does not reveal someone job ability. That does not mean every company is fine with applicants bringing drinks into interview rooms. The Guardian called the debate “a case that shows how standards of workplace etiquette have shifted by generation,” while Fortune noted that it is “not about coffee but about who defines ‘professionalism’.”
In the end, what matters is that each company has its own culture and tacit rules. The Washington Post quoted career expert Sara McCord as saying, “An interview is a setting where companies evaluate applicants, and at the same time a setting where applicants evaluate companies,” and, “If a company disapproves of an applicant who shows up with iced coffee and the applicant does not want a company like that, that is exactly how interviews are supposed to work.”
