AIBU to think takeaway iced coffee at interviews is unprofessional?

Apparently so! OP taking this VERY seriously 😄

Very poor social skills.

It was not 'my company '. I was a employed as a PA. I had no part in the business planning. All I can say is that the technical employees were recruited from all over the UK and beyond and believed to be the best in their field. The company was very successful.

What all this has to do with the topic of this thread I don't know. Clever young people ought to realise without having to be told that it is not professional to take part in important meetings whilst spooning cereals into your mouth.

had you offered him water in a glass/have it available for him?

Who said it was? It's subservient to only drink liquids approved by the interviewer.

Why are you pretending not to know what the job title "support worker" is?

Definitely not professional. Accept a glass of water offered and nothing else imo! We once interviewed a graduate man who had his short sleeves rolled up, leaned back in his chair and swigged constantly from a plastic water bottle - awful! I’m late 40s and worked in publishing for most of my career till recently.

Well, it matters no more than what you're wearing in terms of your ability to do the job, in the vast majority of cases, and yet few people would turn up to an interview in a vest and shorts. First impressions matter, and when you're there to persuade a company that you are the right person out of the multitude of other candidates they are going to interview that week, why would you do anything that might risk the impression you give if you didn't need to? Nobody needs an ice coffee in an interview. Have one before or after. For a lot of people, it comes across as casual, or even disorganised (in that you didn't give yourself time to have your drink beforehand), and you will have no idea whether your interviewer falls in to the category of people who think that. It just seems odd to me to do something you don't need to do on the principle that it 'doesn't matter' when in fact it might.

YANBU it seems quite it doesn't seem very professional to bring a coffee.

i think it’s really interesting that these young people were skilled enough to explain the technology though. Couldn’t you find more mature people who could do so or didn’t they have the right skilll set?

because I mean, it’s your company that choose to put a load of inexperienced grads in an important meeting, cereal or no cereal. Seems quite poorly thought out.

Meanwhile, your rebuttal was ALL feelings, lol. Not a single logical reason as to why they were wrong.
Also, it's an interview - you're being assessed on even the smalls things about yourself.

My boss was the Group Finance and Commercial Director, there to handle the business/financial side of the pitch to the directors of the companies we were aiming to sell to. The graduates were the technical side of the project, there to explain how the systems integrated with their existing programs. If that's ok with you?

Why though? Why does it matter?!

As much as I say I wouldn’t mind, they would need to find a way to still shake hands etc so if both hands were full as a result and they couldn’t juggle it , then it wouldn’t be a great first impression. Although if rest of the interview was good wouldn’t stop me from hiring

No. It's health and safety. None of those takeaway cups are allowed in corridors or classrooms. We have 1,750 teenagers, many of whom are on the corridors at the same time.
Many spillages, many falls in classrooms and corridors have led to this rule.
If you find it funny, that's your prerogative.

i have had candidates turn up for a big 4 interview in jeans. I was not impressed. Find this worse than the iced coffee.

This really made me
laugh. The pure madness of schools as employers and coffee isn’t good enough for you? 😂

Yes but what were they doing with the board?! In a decade of working closely with boards its standard that you don’t have every Tom dick and Harry in a meeting with them.

I would say "yes" , but that's in the context of schools.

Yes I agree. But to the question ‘is it unprofessional?’ I’d say no.

this is timely, I was interviewing yesterday, the interviewer, and had a can of Pepsi which I was drinking in the pre meet, but during the interview I put it out of sight as it didn’t seem professional. Water is fine, anything else, no.

It was a young tech company. Lots of graduates.

Yes, it's about just doing what you want, never mind the situation.

Seems a bit odd to have graduates at board meetings tbh

My boss once had to explain to some graduate employees that it didn't look professional to bring bowls of Shreddies into early morning board level client meetings. Their response was "but I've not had any breakfast". I don't think they would have thought twice about taking drinks to an interview.