Sorry, but I’m bringing my iced coffee to the job interview | Tayo Bero

What, exactly, about the drink is so distracting? The viral debate raises bigger questions about who defines ‘professionalism’

The great iced coffee debate of 2026 is the latest submission to the young-people-just-don’t-get-it discourse and, of course, it’s as polarizing as ever.

Recruiters say you shouldn’t bring iced coffee to interviews , while young people are (rightly) asking: what’s the big deal? It’s one of those conversations that makes me cringe, given just how eagerly it springs up from the generational divide plaguing mainstream culture. And as usual, gen Z are cast as the entitled morons who want to live life with no rules or responsibilities, all to the detriment of the millennials and gen X-ers who have to deal with them.

Iced-coffeegate blew up on social media after the president of a recruiting firm shared a TikTok saying the drink “looks a little too casual” to hiring managers. With thousands of outraged responses across TikTok and Twitter/X, I was stunned to see so many people up in arms about someone bringing a coffee to an interview. Per one of my favorite comments: “It’s an iced coffee, not a bomb!”

Still, these discussions are a reminder of the deep chasms that exist generationally and culturally when it comes to notions of professionalism and how we’re supposed to show up in public life. As I scrolled through endless posts lamenting how terrible youth culture is, I wondered seriously: what is it about an iced coffee that feels so distracting or unprofessional?

Then again, so much of this is tied up in the cultural symbolism and associations we create with the world around us. Iced coffee? So gen Z. But what if it was a warm coffee, in a nice, grown-up looking travel mug? Or what if it was just water? See how silly and arbitrary it all is?

The bigger picture is that for the most part, rules of professionalism are rooted in racist constructs. From Eurocentric dress and hair codes to the weaponization of “what’s appropriate to say at work” to suppress dissenting discourse and discourage non-conformity, “professionalism” is and has always been about social control. These unknowable norms are mostly code for whiteness, and are regularly and violently weaponized against racialized, disabled, poor, young or otherwise minoritized people.

Unfortunately, much of how we are able to show up in public overall is also guided by workplace rules, a clear sign of the death grip that capitalism has on us. Workplaces function as enforcement agents of white supremacy in the office, in ways that inevitably spill over into our lives outside it. As oppressive dress codes limit religious expression, and hair discrimination pushes Black women to alter their natural hair textures, the workplace has become the arbiter of how we are allowed to exist.

Even higher institutions are complicit in pushing the importance of professionalism. Just a few months ago, Tuskegee University, a historically Black institution, announced a new dress code prohibiting students from wearing bonnets and durags in class or any official campus spaces.

Their reasoning? Well, in an email to the student body, the Tuskegee president, Dr Mark Anthony Brown, said the new rules were intended to “prepare [students] with a solid foundation for the workforce.

“Employers are less forgiving and too often presentation may overrule stellar preparation,” he wrote.

We spend far too much time policing irrelevant things like iced coffees, while gen Z languishes in a punishing job market amid the steadily rising cost of living. And as long as we remain beholden to professionalism culture and its shackles, we’ll continue the generational culture wars while young people bear the cost.