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Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | |
CULTURE
How an iced coffee in a job interview sparked a raging etiquette debate
A simple question about the drink has highlighted shifting expectations of professionalism
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FORGET AVOCADO TOAST — over the last two weeks we got a brand spankin’ new consumer indulgence on which to project opinions pertaining to the stunted economic futures faced by each successive generation: iced coffees in job interviews.
A viral debate got started earlier this month with a TikTok from Caitlin Wehniainen (a recruiter who says she has 16 years of experience at “super buttoned-up” Fortune 500 companies) who took to TikTok to complain about Gen Zers showing up to job interviews with an iced coffee.
“It looks like you went to Target, you went to Starbucks, now you’re stopping by for your interview, and then you’re on to the next thing,” she said. “It looks a little too casual to me.”
By the end of the week the video had passed 344,000 views and it was the top story on LinkedIn News, with plenty of millennials in the comments swearing they would never commit such a faux pas.
Some of the objections were practical. “You’re gonna have a wet, plastic, condensation, melted ice, watered-down coffee in an interview?” asked one commenter. “You’re not getting a coaster in an interview.”
Others landed in the middle. “If they’re rattling the ice and loudly slurping through a straw while someone else is talking, that’s annoying,” Adobe’s Navin Watumull told Inc. “But that’s not an iced coffee problem — that’s a manners problem.”
Understandably, many Gen Zers, feeling attacked yet again, weren’t happy. While many are aware that a clammy, cold coffee might not be the ideal thing to bring into an interview, some pointed out that the busted nature of the job market goes well beyond the iced coffee. “We finally make it to the human part of the process and now we’re analyzing the fact that someone walked in holding a $6 iced coffee?” wrote jobseeker Albanery Badia on LinkedIn.
“Maybe it’s a reach, but this modern symbol of iced coffee is inextricably linked to femininity, youthfulness and all other things seen as ‘unprofessional,’” wrote Anna Maria Arriaga (who herself appears to be Gen Z). “To be completely honest, I don’t think I’d bring an iced latte to a job interview. But why such a big fuss? The discourse has rocket-launched the internet into half-baked think-pieces on the true definition of ‘professionalism,’ arguments about sexism and coffee orders and the reality of a devastating job market for recent grads.”
The takeaway? It’s probably not about the coffee — and the intergenerational civil war over the job market isn’t going anywhere. This week it was iced coffee, next week it will probably be something else.
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PRODUCTIVITY
Employees really are too damn busy
Why AI is leaving many employees more overworked and less productive
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IN 1987, NOBEL laureate economist Robert Solow famously quipped that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
While work was, at the time, undergoing an upheaval that might compare with what we’re seeing today, it was hard to tell whether it was making people more productive, or just giving them another thing to manage.
And we’re seeing an echo of that today. A new report from Korn Ferry suggests that while businesses feel they have the tools and workflows to supercharge productivity, it has been slow to materialize in any measurable way, because workers are being kept too busy.
“Organizations are pushing harder than ever. More tools. More work. More pressure,” the Workforce 2026 survey titled Growing Nowhere begins. “The harder they push, the less they’re getting back. Right now, there’s a serious disconnect between boardroom strategies and the people tasked with delivering them.”
Drawn from a survey of over 16,000 workers, Korn Ferry’s statistics indicate that 62 per cent say the introduction of AI into their workplace has corresponded with a workload that has “increased significantly” over the past two years, even though 63 per cent say the tools increase their efficiency on a particular task.
Forty-five per cent now say they are too busy to deliver meaningful results, while 64 per cent said their organization seems to focus more on how quickly work is done than how much value it adds. This, they suggest, is a problem for global growth rates.
“Activity is not the same as value,” stated Roger Philby from Korn Ferry. “Organizations are great at measuring activities but find it much harder to connect the dots to value.”
Elsewhere in the report, he notes that “efficiency tells you what to cut. It doesn’t tell you what to build, and the best organizations understand the value of both.”
The report suggests that firms have, en masse, confused efficiency for productivity — and this is part of why many firms that have leaned hard on cutting-edge AI tools are still failing to see tangible returns. “Roles are disappearing — cut, restructured, replaced by AI,” the report noted.
While the ability to complete more tasks with fewer people with AI is plausible, Korn Ferry’s report suggests that while the work is getting done, value isn’t being generated.
“Can we sustain people feeling like they’re permanently working two jobs? Will you keep your highest performers? Will you see the quality of work that sets a company apart?” asks Korn Ferry’s Jenna Young. “Not for long.”
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Terry Talk: Clarity is a leadership responsibility
| Your employees may not be stressed because they’re busy. They may be stressed because they’re confused. In this edition of Terry Talk, Ahria Consulting president & CEO Terry Gillis reflects on a recent study that found the biggest workplace stressor isn’t overload. It’s ambiguity. Before launching another workplace program, Terry suggests asking three questions: Do people know what’s expected? Are they getting conflicting messages? Have we given them enough time to do the work? Because clarity isn’t an HR issue. It’s a leadership responsibility. | | | |
CAREERS
Is this it?
Millennials are experiencing massive mid-career identity crisis
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WHEN GLASSDOOR’S SENIOR economist Chris Martin went reaching for a metaphor to describe how millennials were feeling in 2026 as he wrote their 2026 millennial career report, he found himself thinking about Gen Xers, and specifically The Strokes, who in 2001 put out a classic album of ennui and listlessness in a changing world, summed up by the titular question: Is This It?
That, he said, pretty much sums up how millennials are feeling these days, at least according to their survey data.
“We’ve made it,” Martin told Fortune, “and the long and the short of it is, it doesn’t feel good.”
Seventy-six per cent of millennials surveyed said they were questioning their career path, and millennials were posting on Glassdoor about burnout 44 per cent more often than everyone else. (For millennial women, the figure jumps to 76 per cent.) Sixty-eight per cent were delaying major life milestones because they feel their careers are insufficient, unsatisfying, unstable or a combination of all three.
Many millennials are looking around and having, Martin figures, their is this it? moment.
“I turn 34 in a week, and I am miserable after spending the last 12-plus years in various communications jobs,” one user was quoted as saying. Another complained that “somewhere along the way, stability started to feel like a rare outcome.”
Stacia Doss, Glassdoor’s senior manager of content strategy, wrote that “an entire generation is looking at everything they’ve built and asking if it’s still worth it.”
If you’re a burned-out millennial though, it’s almost a guarantee that you’re going to roll your eyes at the suggestion that Glassdoor has for you: you just need to be “stability stacking” — get another skill, another job, and if you spread the risk around enough, career disruption can be manageable.
“Stability stacking is a way to make sure that you have alternatives lined up should things go sideways at your current role,” Martin told Business Insider. “The reason we see more of this with millennials is because they experienced a couple really big rug-pull moments in their career."
Some millennials, like Janel Abrahami, are embracing it. “I think stability stacking offers a more empowering way for us to break out of this very murky cycle that we find ourselves in 10 to 15 years out of college,” she said.
Others, however, aren’t so hospitable to the notion. “While stability stacking is a great way to hedge against going down a single career path that could seemingly disappear at any moment, it also takes a lot of effort to work multiple jobs, network and build new skills,” wrote Future Party’s David Vendrell. “No wonder millennials are also experiencing the most burnout.”
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IDENTITY
AI deception
The biggest victim in the emergence of AI? Guys named Al
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OKAY, MAYBE YOU’RE having a bad time as a millennial, a Gen Z who loves iced coffee or as an overburdened worker. But have you considered that other people are suffering, too? Like, namely, guys named Al, who are finding that they are typographically indistinguishable from AI, and suffering as a result.
“That little lowercase L can look exactly like a capital I,” said Al Ribaya, owner of Al’s Attire in San Francisco. “Apparently my entire human identity depends on one very small line.”
Ribaya is apparently not alone. “Online, in print and in restaurant delivery orders, the Als of the world are increasingly running into this confusion,” wrote the San Francisco Standard. “Since the artificial boom kicked off in late 2022 … scores of people who go by Al — often short for Albert or Allen — have been beleaguered by typos and font confusion and have fielded silly questions about whether they’re an AI bot.”
The writer, and indeed many of the unhappy Als, are forced to concede that this problem is “typeface-based,” and some blame can be laid at the feet of sans-serif fonts.
Let’s hear from some guys named Al. “I’m apparently narcissistic because whenever I see a headline trumpeting “AI,” a tiny part of brain somehow thinks it’s about me,” wrote Alfred Lubrano, who also says, “It’s sort of pathetic.”
Al Roker isn’t happy either. “I’m not so upset about AI as much as when I see it in print, it always looks like Al. I think it should be A.I. or A-I — because when you look at the headlines, it says ‘AI will destroy us,’ and I don’t want to take that responsibility,” Roker said.
Some Als want to fight back. Al Adamsen told the San Francisco Standard that he exclusively writes AI as Ai, although that is probably just shifting the problem, especially in east Asia, where “Ai” is a common female name. Nobody is catching a break, it seems.
But clothier Ribaya, at least, thinks he can roll with it. “I was Al before there was AI,” he said. “AI can shorten an answer, and then Al can shorten your trousers.”
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