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Sorry, but I’m bringing my iced coffee to the job interview
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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
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Having needed to hire for engineering teams, I think the iced coffee would be a big deal if the position was client facing and wouldn't be if it was internal.
The answer for me of "who defines professionalism" is the client. If the effective end client is me, I don't care. I'm pretty lax and chill.
However, if I'm hiring for a client facing role and you bring an iced coffee, you are saying that you don't know or don't care about client expectations and that is a red flag. I work in an industry where it is still the expectation to wear a suit and tie to certain client meetings. If you can't play the game with me, how can I trust you to play the game with the client?
You mean the client expectations which were created last week over a fake social media controversy by people who literally have nothing better to do than shitpost on LinkedIn? Sorry we do enough actual work that we aren't up on LinkedIn meta.
Brother, I promise you I can sell a customer on the idea that we are just that fucking good, that our iced coffee rebellion is exactly what they are looking for. Because we actually are very fucking good at what we do.
No. I just know to not being a drink into a client meeting. Throw it out beforehand.
People promise things all the time.
I have been working professionally, at a high level for 20 years and have never heard any commentary about bringing drinks to meetings until literally this week. Get off of it. It's not a thing.
Could be different professions, different markets, different cultures. You also came to me.
Dress codes like that are racist. As a Native American I should be allowed to have my hair and clothing in a traditionally Cherokee style if I want to and if your clients have a problem with that then they are racist fucks who can go fuck themselves.
At the end of the day “the customer is always right” doesn’t mean I should be expected to sell my scruples for your ROI.
I wasn't talking about hair? I feel like we're starting to mix appearance requirements with non-appearance presentation.
And I don't care about hair other than it would be considered "neat" in the culture it came from. Given the multicultural mix of where I work, people wear a wide variety of different hair styles including afros, turbans, beards, and marks on their forehead. Even worked with a non-federally recognized Native American engineer who wore his hair long in a ponytail.
You just said that iced coffee was enough to let you know someone wasn’t serious about client expectations and that you still work at a place that requires a suit and tie on occasion. I’ve never worked somewhere that had a dress code, even one that didn’t apply all the time, that didn’t mention hair.
Regardless, I find it hard to square the idea that iced coffee wouldn’t fly but an Afro would. But maybe I just live around a lot of racist people.
I live in an area with a lot of various immigrant groups, so the hair requirement gets limited to neat and tidy without specifying length. There is also a lot more leeway if you aren't seeing a client or you're out in the field.
It sounds like you live around a lot of racist people, but also an unresponsive legal system. The number of successful lawsuits in my state regarding discrimination have generally beat out any desire to measure hair in the industry I work in.