The sneaky trick work-from-home employees are using to pretend they're in office, as Amazon launches new crackdown on the scam

As corporate employees are being forced to return to office and abandon their remote lifestyle, many have begun to adopt new tactics to skirt around the demand. 

Coffee Badging is the latest controversial trend being adopted by office goers wherein employees scans their IDs and stay long enough to grab a coffee or attend a meeting before heading home to continue working. 

A 2023 OwlLabs report shows that 58 percent of hybrid employees surveyed were participating in the trend and admitted to 'showing face at the office and then leaving.'

But companies such as Amazon have begun cracking down on this fad and are considering implementing a 'minimum number of hours in office per day' mandate that needs to be fulfilled by workers. 

Coffee Badging is the latest controversial trend being adopted by office goers wherein employees scans their IDs and stay long enough to grab a coffee or attend a meeting before heading home to continue working. (Stock image)

In a series of Slack messages obtained by Seattle Times, employees said there has been 'lots of talk' about the new mandate and were seen comparing notes. 

The texts reveal that the mandate is not being uniformly imposed across teams and is not yet a formal policy change.

While some teams have not heard about the new requirement, others have been told they must be in for two hours a day, two anonymous employees told the publication. 

Business Insider claims that others have been told that there is a six-hour minimum requirement effective now. 

But companies such as Amazon have begun cracking down on this fad and are considering implementing a 'minimum number of hours in office per day' mandate that needs to be fulfilled by workers

Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, said the company has started to 'speak directly with employees who haven't regularly been spending meaningful amounts of time in the office.'

'The company made the return-to-office mandate because it believed that would yield the best long-term results for our customers, business and culture. And it has. 

'The vast majority of employees are in the office more frequently, there's more energy, connection and collaboration, and we're hearing that from employees and the businesses that surround our offices,' she said.

Since the announcement, some employees have been pushing back against the mandate. 

'You can't help but laugh at how terribly this company has handled this entire fiasco,' one employee allegedly wrote in one of the Slack messages procured by Seattle Times last week.

While some teams have not heard about the new requirement, others have been told they must be in for two hours a day, two anonymous employees told the publication. (Stock image) 

News of the new hourly mandate comes a year after CEO Andy Jassy said company workers who defy his directive to return to the office for a minimum of three days a week may be best placed to leave the company altogether.

During a recent 'fishbowl' meeting, he expressed frustration over employees not taking his return-to-office policy seriously and told those refusing to come in for the three-day minimum: 'It's probably not going to work out for you.'

The CEO's remarks were obtained from a recording of the meeting by Insider.

Although he did not share specific data that saw him push for a return for workers to be back in the office, he described it as a 'judgment' call.

Jassy then suggested that, if workers disagreed with his decision, they may want to look at working elsewhere entirely. 

He said he had spoken with between 60-80 other CEOs and found that 'virtually all of them' favored having employees return to the office.

CEO Andy Jassy said company workers who defy his directive to return to the office for a minimum of three days a week may be best placed to leave the company altogether

Among other things, he said senior leadership watched how staff performed and talked to leaders at other companies. He said they concluded employees tended to be more engaged in person and collaborate more easily. 

But a study by Unily reveals that half of the workers surveyed said they are distracted at least once every half hour and nearly a third are distracted at least once every 15 minutes.

Roger Hall, a business psychologist based in Boise, Idaho explained: 'For every interruption, it takes about 20 minutes to get at a deep level of concentration again. 

'If you do the math, if their interruptions are at every 15 minutes, then never, in the course of a day, ever [is someone] at a deep level of concentration.

'At the end of the day, our brain is tapped out. The result is that we are less productive — that has taken a hit.'