coffee badging

noun

working on-site for a short time before returning to work from home

What does coffee badging mean?

Coffee badging refers to the act or practice of working on-site for a short, perfunctory amount of time, and then returning to work from home. Coffee badge is also used as a verb.

Examples of coffee badging

I hear some managers pushing back to office as much more beneficial for productivity and morale than work from home, yet seem to only be able to monitor it through badge scans at office locations, and struggling to respond to the coffee badging.
—@Here_4_Laughs_1983, Reddit, 23 Mar. 2025

Amazon cracks down on ‘coffee badging’ employees by tracking individual hours spent in the office
—(headline), Business Insider, 16 June 2024

… we also reserve the right to coffee badge ourselves if we’ve got a package being delivered to our home in the afternoon.
—The Guardian (London), 29 Jan. 2025

Where does coffee badging come from?

The earliest uses of coffee badging arose following efforts by many workplaces to have their employees return to working on-site during the Covid pandemic. The earliest uses revolve around a study conducted by Owl Labs, a company that makes video conferencing devices. The coffee half of coffee badging is clear—the idea is that coffee-badging employees only show up in person long enough to have a cup of coffee and be seen. The badging half is less so—early uses mention two different kinds of badges: real and imaginary.

As … more companies call workers back to the office, employee resistance continues, especially for those whose workplaces once said they were “remote-first.” The latest resistance strategy, “coffee badging,” involves employees coming into the office just long enough to grab a coffee and chat, then returning home to finish work from there.
—Bryan Robinson, Forbes, 11 Mar. 2023

More than half (58%) of hybrid workers are “coffee badging”—showing up to the office for enough time to have a cup of coffee and earn an imaginary badge for it, then going home to do their work. Another 8% said they haven’t been coffee badging but would like to try it.
—Owl Labs, via Business Wire, 28 Sept. 2023

Forced back into the office, many employees have admitted to showing up for just a few hours—enough time to swipe in with their employee badge, have a cup of coffee, and be seen in the workplace—then heading back home to do their work, according to a new study. Coined as “coffee badging,” the trend showed up on a new survey of 2,000 full-time US workers …
—Lucas Mearian, ARN, 5 Oct. 2023

How is coffee badging used?

In addition to coffee badging and coffee badge, there is also coffee badger, which sounds like it could refer to an adorable brown-furred burrowing mustelid, but of course simply means “one who coffee badges.”