The world is full of a thousand little rules we instinctively follow. Don’t make eye contact for too long. If you drop your trash by accident, pick it up. Don’t throw things at people.
Photo by Edan Cohen on Unsplash
And in the workplace, it’s even more important.
At least, that’s the theory, and to some extent, it’s true. I’ve worked for people, and I’ve had people work for me. My own management style is, well, minimal, but not everyone works that way, and I’ve been far enough up the food chain in these roles that no one really cared how I did things.
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Especially when I owned the business.
Anyway, there are certain things that make sense and some that don’t, and now people are clashing over something that seems silly , but is indicative of a real problem.
Iced coffee has become the latest unlikely subject of workplace controversy.
TikTok users are debating whether bringing iced coffee to a job interview is a harmless caffeine fix or a frosty professional faux pas .
The discourse became heated enough to reach LinkedIn News on Friday, where LinkedIn news editor Rachel Kleinman described it as a “fiery debate lighting up social media.”
While some recruiters said arriving with a drink in hand could appear distracting or disrespectful, others questioned why a simple attempt to remain caffeinated should have any bearing on a candidate’s ability to do the job.
Three career experts told Business Insider that the answer depends on whom you ask, and perhaps how much condensation is dripping from the cup.
Now, here’s the thing for me. I’ve never considered taking a drink into an interview. I’m not even comfortable taking one if offered. I don’t do it because it’s generally a short enough process that it’s unnecessary.
And frankly, saying you need to stay caffeinated to talk to a potential boss sends signals I don’t know that I’d have been a fan of.
The problem here is that people are opining on this sort of thing often without asking a question of why we tended not to bring beverages to interviews in the first place. It’s one of a thousand examples of people seeking to upset the status quo without understanding why the status quo exists.
On the flip side, many of those who are upset over it may not even know why they’re upset over it. I doubt anyone came right out and said, “You guys tend to be so boring that I need as much caffeine as possible to stay awake to talk to you.” They just got bent out of shape from the start.
These little rules are common, but they generally all start from somewhere, and like Chesterton’s Fence, we need to understand them and why they exist before we set about dismantling them.
For example, I’ve wanted some norms dismantled over the years, and it was simply that I thought they were stupid. In some cases, I was right, but in others, they really weren’t.
In some cases, that past version of me was so up his own posterior about the principles of things that he didn’t bother to think through the ramifications. I actually thought open borders, for example, was a solid idea. I thought trade with China would make them freer. I thought a lot of things that history has shown I was wrong about.
Hey, I’m human. I can take being wrong.
Today, I look at these things, and I think first about why we have the rules that we have. Is it protectionism when we want secure borders, something we do to protect American jobs? Or is it that illegal border crossings include a large number of criminals who are looking for new opportunities to carry out their own profession in the Land of the Free?
Is free trade with China going to result in free people in China, when it clearly hasn’t done so yet, but it has infested the United States with plenty of equipment with capabilities they shouldn’t have, such as being able to turn off the green power grid with the proverbial flip of the switch?
I thought buying American was jingoistic, but now I think it’s a defensive mechanism, a matter of national security.
And is it right to bring an iced coffee into a job interview?
Perhaps more importantly, why do you think you need it inside with you for a 20-minute interview? Or do you just need to knock down doors for the sake of knocking them down?
If so, be careful, because you might be on the other side of that desk and have to deal with someone just like you, only worse, and have no recourse left because of what you did at the time.
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Chesterton’s Fence and iced coffee
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at TomKnighton.