What is Coffee Badging?

Coffee badging - what?

There are so many negatives about the whole global lockdown and shit that happened but there are also quite a few positives. The increased flexibility of work that people now have is such a wonderful development. There are certainly some downsides to all of that for a company however there is a great increase in the right way to balance work and personal life that has largely not happened for the past several decades.

This change in how people work was a substantial positive development for those people who were in the 20, 30 and 40 age range when it happened because we were more adept at using computers and technology overall compared to our older counterparts. This isn't always the case, but I'm making a generalization for illustration purposes here. There are those who dislike this though, and it definitely shows.

The whole push to "return to office" type shit that's occurred in America has been such a fiasco and it is fueled by mostly a bunch of horse shit. When many people work remotely, again overall - there are plenty of edge cases but that is not the focus of this discussion, they have more time to sleep, do small cleaning around the house and just be generally happier and more productive. If we need to run an errand - we figure out in our daily schedule when we could do it and just offset it by working an hour or two later in the day depending how long we were out. These things are very basic and how a small business owner would be operating in many ways.

Forcing people to be present in the office just for face-time is such a load of bullshit that caters to those who are not able to adapt to the change in how work is being done. I know there are certainly situations that you'd want people there in the office - an important meeting with your team to discuss an upcoming initiative that's going to have big impacts on them. Those things are usually a good way to get people in there but largely just for a few hours, pow-wow and go home where you can finish off the day.

I think people are really smart though, and adapting to the utter horse shit rules that are being foisted upon them to force them into the office multiple days per week. In comes "Coffee Badging" and I love it!

The management and HR busy-bodies largely don't give a shit about the people who are being forced in, they are just compliance driven which is fucking stupid in that they just care about people adhering to the rules even though the rules are a bunch of bullshit. What they look for is if someone used their badge to get into the office for the day and don't bother checking anything else. So what do the smart people who know all of this is a sham do? Waste their morning driving to the office, swipe their badge to get in, get a coffee and chat with a few people around the office to show their face and then say fuck off and leave mid-morning.

I think that's genius, really. It satisfies the busy-body HR fools and it also allows them to show their face to the people who don't care about anything except seeing you there even if you work incredibly efficiently at home, and you leave once those criteria are satisfied. Maybe log into your computer and look at an email or two but then lock the computer. I think that this is a way to rebel against these absurd rules but also still be able to do the work that you know you need to do, and for a subset of the population at least enjoy doing to some extent.

This doesn't apply to me, at least in my current job because I work completely remotely however it may in the future because I don't assume anything is going to remain constant except change. Having that in my mind though, if I am required to participate in this office requirement sham - I will absolutely be doing this coffee badging shit, because working from home is a much more efficient and satisfying experience for me on most days.

I will admit, as I mentioned earlier, there are some opportunities that being on-site with your colleagues is a big advantage. I experienced both working on-site full time in an office setting as well as doing hybrid and then fully remote so I have experienced the gamut of it all. I know that being in a conference room with a few of my colleagues to discuss and hash something out is a good thing to have for some situations but not for all. If you are a team that is able to work remotely but schedule a yearly or biannual meeting at the office those I think make sense depending on the composition of your team. This office requirement though, and if you don't comply with the sham you get demoted, fired or disciplined is a sign of how archaic a lot of these companies can be, but then claim to be innovative at the same time.

I think the shift in demographics is showing how these policies fail on their face but we find ways around it until the culture changes more.