Opinion · Work & Culture
“Don’t waltz into your interview all casual with an iced coffee.” That one line from a recruiter on TikTok set off an argument that has run for weeks. Then a second video, about crop tops at the office, passed 1.1 million views and pulled the same fight back up.
My view: the iced coffee was never the real problem. What people judge is the attitude around it. A drink in your hand just makes that attitude easier to see.
What is actually being discussed?
- Recruiter Caitlin Wehniainen, who posts job-search advice, warned candidates not to bring iced coffee to interviews.
- The clip turned into a generational debate. Columnists at Bloomberg, The Washington Post, the Financial Times and The Irish Times all weighed in.
- On October 13, BuzzFeed reported on a TikTok titled “We need to discuss corporate crop tops.” It had more than 1.1 million views.
- Its creator argued that midriff tops don’t belong “at any office,” because “there’s just rules, and there’s decorum.”
- The most-liked reply, with nearly 22,000 likes, didn’t pick a side. It said it’s hard to find women’s tops that aren’t cropped.
Sources: Bloomberg Opinion via Butler Eagle, The Week, BuzzFeed, Forbes
A coffee doesn’t make anyone rude. It makes rudeness louder.
Some people get nervous before an interview. Holding a drink gives their hands something to do. Taking a sip buys a second to think. If that’s why the cup is there, I don’t see a problem.
Now picture the same candidate, but distracted. They set the cup down on the interviewer’s papers. They slurp through a question. They glance at the door. Without the coffee, that would look like a weak interview. With the coffee, it looks like they treated the interview as a stop between errands.
That is the whole difference, as I see it. The drink isn’t a minus on its own. It multiplies whatever attitude comes in with it.
Psychology has a name for how fast we jump to that judgment. It’s the fundamental attribution error. In a 1967 study, Edward Jones and Victor Harris had people read essays about Fidel Castro. Readers assumed the writers believed what they wrote, even when told the writers had been assigned a side.
We read behavior as character, and we underweight the situation. An interviewer who sees a cup and a slouch doesn’t think “nervous.” They think “doesn’t care.”
An interview makes this stronger. It’s one of the few moments when effort is the whole message, because the interviewer can’t see your work yet. This is the same logic I wrote about in costly signaling. A signal means more when it costs the sender something, so every small choice gets read as a sign of how much you care.
Crop tops at the office: the rulebook comes first
The crop top video was about the office, not interviews, and the office is a different room. Once you work somewhere, you can wear what you want, as long as you follow the company’s dress policy. Nobody should police clothing that the rules allow.
The most-liked reply under that video didn’t argue about manners at all. It pointed at what is actually on store racks. One way to read that is that some choices people call “attitude” start out as plain logistics.
Still, I’d add one condition. If you wear something that might make coworkers uneasy, wear it knowing that. Freedom to dress how you like doesn’t come with freedom from how it lands.
Think of it this way. A dress policy tells you what is allowed. It can’t tell you how each person in the room will feel about it. Someone in a client meeting, or a coworker from a more formal background, might still react. That reaction isn’t a rule you broke. It’s just information you should have going in.
That is a different line from the interview. In an interview, you’re asking to be let in. At your desk, you’ve already been let in, and the written rules do most of the work.
Hoodies, a bank memo and a 10-day dress code
The same tension has shown up in very different rooms. Each case tells me who gets to break a dress norm, and when.
A hoodie in front of investors
In May 2012, Mark Zuckerberg pitched Facebook’s IPO to Wall Street investors in a hoodie. Analyst Michael Pachter told Bloomberg TV it showed a lack of seriousness, which coverage summed up as “a sign of immaturity.” Others saw a founder who didn’t need to perform.
Same hoodie, two readings. The difference was what each viewer already believed about him.
A bank that loosened up, with a catch
In March 2019, Goldman Sachs moved to a flexible dress code, citing a shift toward more casual workplaces. The memo also asked staff to “dress in a manner that is consistent with your clients’ expectations.”
The written rule relaxed. The unwritten one stayed: think about who is looking at you.
The Senate tried casual for ten days
On September 17, 2023, the U.S. Senate relaxed its floor dress code, which let Sen. John Fetterman keep wearing hoodies and shorts. Backlash came from both parties. About ten days later, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution requiring business attire again.
Here the written rule changed, and the room changed it right back. Unwritten norms can be stronger than the rulebook.
When breaking the rule actually helps
There is research on the other side, too. Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino and Anat Keinan studied what they called the red sneakers effect. A professor in a T-shirt was rated higher in status than one in a tie. But the boost only showed up when the rule-breaking looked deliberate. When it looked like the person didn’t know the norm, it read as a mistake.
That fits the interview case. A candidate hasn’t proven anything yet, so a casual choice is more likely to read as “didn’t know” or “didn’t try.”
Why “they don’t pay me enough” cuts the wrong way
One reply under the crop top video asked why anyone should care about dress codes on today’s pay. I understand the frustration. Wages feel low, and dressing up can feel like unpaid work.
But I think the logic runs backward. Put yourself in a manager’s seat. Would you want to give a raise to the person who pays attention to small things? Or to the one who does what they like because the pay is low?
Research leans the same way. A 2009 meta-analysis by Nathan Podsakoff and colleagues pooled 168 samples and about 51,000 people. Going beyond the job description, which researchers call organizational citizenship behavior, was linked to better performance ratings and reward decisions.
To be fair to the other side, the exchange runs both ways. Jacqueline Coyle-Shapiro followed 480 public sector employees over three years. What workers believed their employer owed them helped explain how much extra they gave. People who feel shortchanged tend to pull back.
So both sides are reacting to something real. Still, if you hold back the small effort first, you lose the thing that most often leads to more pay.
Why each generation thinks the other one is rude
Bloomberg columnist Beth Kowitt called the iced coffee critique “lazy gatekeeping.” An Irish Times columnist tied it to quiet quitting. Both are sure the other side is the one being unreasonable.
That’s a small case of naive realism. My sense of normal feels neutral, so yours looks like the odd one. An older manager sees the cup and reads disrespect. A younger candidate sees the reaction and reads snobbery.
Neither reading is fully wrong. Some managers really do judge by habit, not by the work. Some candidates really haven’t thought about how they come across. The trouble starts when each side decides the other’s motive before asking.
I’d argue the useful question isn’t whose norm is right. It’s what the other person is likely to see.
A quick check before you walk in
If you’re unsure about a drink, an outfit or anything else, try these three questions:
- Is this room asking me to prove effort, like an interview, or am I already inside, like my desk?
- If I were acting distracted, would this item make it look worse?
- Would I be fine if someone read this choice as how much I care?
If the answers make you hesitate, the object isn’t the issue. The message is.
Editorial note: This is an opinion piece based on public reporting as of October 18, 2026. Dress norms vary a lot by industry and workplace, so check your own company’s policy. The featured image is AI-generated.