A small cup of iced coffee has become an unlikely mirror held up between generations — reflecting not a clash of values, but a collision of unspoken assumptions about what it means to show up prepared. Recruiters across the country are flagging the habit among Gen Z job candidates not as a grievance about caffeine, but as a signal that professional spaces still carry invisible codes of conduct that no one explicitly teaches. In the long human story of how each generation inherits and renegotiates the workplace, this moment asks a quiet but serious question: who is responsible for translating t