Things Stacey Says on Podcasts

And the internet basically broke very much along generational lines with a lot of Gen Z workers being like, excuse me? First of all, what's so bad about an iced coffee? What about my skills? What about my answers to questions and things of substance? And then like some older workers weighing in and being like, that is totally unprofessional. What are you thinking? My thought is this is a huge tell about the labor market moment we're in. I think companies are holding off hiring because they're trying to keep their powder dry and keep money for AI investment. I think there's also a lot of uncertainty around interest rates, borrowing costs, tariffs, gas prices, all of it. So they're holding on to, they're not expanding and hiring at the same rate they used to. Also, there's a lot of uncertainty about how many people they would need to hire. Enter the iced coffee. There are so many people applying. There are a lot of qualified people applying for jobs. And I think back in 2022, there were two open jobs for every available worker. Now there is about one open job for every available worker. And so I think ridiculous debates like whether or not it's okay to bring an iced coffee into a job interview, I mean, it just becomes so tight that it becomes these little sort of minutiae effects. Whereas I think in 2022, when there were two open jobs for every available worker, you could have eaten a sandwich in your job interview. It probably wouldn't have made that much of a difference.