How coffee badging became a revolt against return-to-office mandates

As the world transitions from the pandemic, Corporate America’s evolving stance on remote work has given rise to an intriguing workplace trend: coffee badging.

“Coffee badging was a term that Owl Labs coined as part of its 2023 State of Hybrid Work report,” said Frank Weishaupt, CEO of the videoconferencing tech-maker. “And what we found was that employees weren’t necessarily returning to the office in a traditional 8-to-5 manner, five days a week, but they were coffee badging. Some were going in just to show face, grab a cup of coffee, say hi to some of their colleagues, maybe their boss, so that they could check the box for their company’s return to office mandate.”

Some experts suggest that workplace trends like this often reflect the broader job market. When worker demand was high during the pandemic, ‘quiet quitting’ dominated conversations. But as the job market tightens, especially for white-collar jobs, coffee badging has become a response to stricter office policies.

“A lot of the workplace trends that we’re seeing right now are very much reflective of what’s happening in the overall job market,” said Kory Kantenga, head of economics, Americas at LinkedIn.

While the U.S. economy remains strong, the job market has cooled. Only 227,000 jobs were added in November, compared to the monthly averages of about 399,000 in 2022 and 251,000 in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

This slowdown has emboldened major corporations to enforce stricter in-office mandates. For instance, Amazon raised eyebrows in September when CEO Andy Jassy announced that corporate employees must return to the office five days a week starting in January 2025. As the world’s second-largest employer after Walmart, with 1.5 million employees globally, Amazon faced criticism for this move, including pushback from its own workforce.

“(Amazon) employees have been up in arms about that. They don’t want that. They want to keep their flexibility,” said Hilke Schellmann, author of ‘The Algorithm’ and professor at NYU, “It remains to be seen if this is going to have a huge ripple effect if other employers are going to mandate the same thing.”

Despite shifting employer-employee power dynamics, many employees continue to resist full-time in-office mandates. Experts say coffee badging represents a subtle form of protest.

“It is a silent protest of saying I just want to be home,” said Dan Kaplan, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.

Watch the video above to learn what this trend reveals about the state of the job market and the future of the workplace.