The millennials lead the revolt of the “coffee” to protest against the return to the office while the companies grow to fill empty seats

This new fashionable word arouses anxiety in the conference rooms, because the “coffee badge” shows that what has started as a cheeky return for return mandates at the post-federal office has become an important challenge for companies in the grip of the rules of the workplace.

The scope of the problem

Recent surveys show that coffee badges are not a marginal behavior: it is now practiced by an amazing part of the workforce. According to data from several sources, 44% of hybrid workers in the United States recognize coffee insignia, and more than 58% of respondents in a survey of 2,000 American workers admit to having done it at least once. But the problem is not limited to a small segment of multinationals or technological workers. In fact, three out of four companies – 75% – have experienced difficulties with employee coffee insignia, making it a general concern between industries and corporate sizes.

Business Insider recently delivered a scoop that coffee badge has become so bad in the American Samsung semiconductor division that he explicitly reprimanded workers on this subject and deployed a RTO monitoring tool. While celebrating that “more smiling faces can be seen in the corridors”, Samsung has announced that its new “compliance tool for people managers” “would guarantee that team members meet their expectations concerning work during the office – if this is defined with their business manager – as well as standing against cases of lunch / coffee.”

Samsung’s move has followed a coffee repression on Amazon. It has become so bad there that managers have tête-à-tête conversations with employees in the number of hours they literally return to the office. “Now that it’s been more than a year, we are starting to speak directly with employees who have not regularly spent time in the office to ensure that they understand the importance of spending quality time with their colleagues,” said Amazon in a press release Fortune.

Why do so many companies have trouble?

Return to office mandates were supposed to restore normality and stimulate productivity. Instead, they sparked a silent revolt.

Employees – in particular millennials – take advantage of hybrid policies in their favor, finding the least disruptive means of complying, while minimizing the journey and office time.

A study revealed that even 47% of managers admitted to the coffee, stressing the depth of this behavior rooted through hierarchies. It is actually higher than the number of individual contributors (34%) that drag Java.

How companies react

Faced with a widespread trend and difficult to measure, companies are experiencing everything, more strict follow -up to radically new incentives. The first is, simply, the follow -up of badge sweeping: Gartner reported that 60% of companies followed the employees in 2022, more than doubling since the start of the pandemic and only larger since. Others, like Amazon, now require a minimum number of hours of work in office, not just a badge.

A minority goes from evaluations based on hours to results, in the hope of stimulating authentic office commitment. Others are employees with improved equipment and greater calendar autonomy, aimed at making time of functions more attractive than compulsory. However, the leaders fear that coffee badges report more in -depth disengagement – and that RTO Unize strategies

Ahead

Coffee badges do not only concern workers who were pleasing to policies; It is the symptom of a deeper disconnection between the traditional expectations of the workplace and the realities of the work of white collars in 2025. As long as employees can be productive remotely – and consider time in person as a performative hoop – large companies will have to rethink the office value proposal, not just execution.

The majority of companies reporting difficulties and almost half of hybrid workers engaging in practice, coffee badges do not disappear soon. Rather than fighting it with stricter rules, organizations may need to listen to what it reveals about employee motivation, commitment and the future of work culture itself.

Are you a coffee badger? Do you have them in your team or do you know others who slide in and out after a brief appearance? We would be delighted to hear you. Contact nick.lichtenberg@consultant.fortune.com.

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.