How does it know it is you, then, and not someone with a borrowed/stolen badge? Do the cameras automatically recognize you? If so, however, why do you need the badge?
Unless it has a biometric reader, the badge reader does not know that “it is you,” it simply knows that a valid badge is being presented.
Borrowing another person’s electronic badge is, IME, always something that you are told to never do, but undoubtedly does happen (e.g., “I forgot my badge today, and need to run downstairs, can I borrow yours?”)
If a badge goes missing or is stolen, the employee is supposed to report that it’s missing; the old badge will be deactivated or removed /de-authorized from the system, and a new badge gets issued.
I worked as a messenger in Manhattan the summer of 1969, and I went to lots and lots of office buildings. (This was when subways were so cheap no one used bicycles.) I never had any problem getting into any of them. I wore a jacket and tie so I’d look like I belonged there.
When I started at Bell Labs in 1980 we had ids, but we showed them to the guard and stuck them back in our pockets. Then we had to show them and wear them. 15 years later you had to swipe them.
Famous example. My dad worked in the UN, and his office was one floor below the first. In the '70s I used to come to visit, and I got to his office by going down the stairs from the main tourist lobby (where the pendulum hangs) past the soda machines and through a door that said “Do Not Enter.” It was not alarmed and no one ever stopped me. Today I think you need advance permission to even go into the building.
The last two large companies I worked for progressively eliminated receptionists/guards at the multiple (many) sites to save money. Even large sites no longer had one, entry cards with restrictions on what doors you could get through replaced everything.
My ex-wife was an engineer who worked on secret stuff for a name brand defense contractor. Badges were a big deal.
She told a story that I’ve forgotten most of the details about, but one morning at home circa 2005 as she was clipping her badge to her outfit she noticed … it wasn’t her badge. She had no idea how she came to be wearing some other guy’s badge. Nor any idea where hers was. Nor who this person was; she didn’t recognize the name or face. Nor how long ago she’d ended up with the wrong badge.
What else to do but go to work where she could get on her work computer & use that to locate the guy whose badge she had. She had no problem getting to her work area with his badge; the guard at the outer lobby looked but did not see. And the door control computers let her into her area.
At this point I’ve lost the rest of the story, but there was actually quite a tale of chills and spills that took most of a week to unscramble the mistaken badges. Meanwhile both of them are coming and going with the wrong badge bearing a pic and first name that doesn’t match their obvious gender.
As best they could figure, they’d both handed their badges to a guard at about the same time and after looking at them the guard handed them back to the opposite person. They both then clipped “their” badge to their clothing without looking at it. Oops.
Nobody but she and he were ever the wiser.
I guess it’s time I chimed in. From your stories I’m getting the impression that the open access model to office buildings is being abandoned and that what I was used to from my youth is no longer the standard.
Very inconvenient for me as a user, but I guess I can see how, if people come in pretending to be repairmen and come out with a whole Xerox machine, why they might see fit to introduce tighter security.
I used to have to show my green DoD active-duty military ID to a security guard to drive onto the lower (naval) base where a dozen or so nuclear submarines were docked. I would pull my ID out of my wallet and show it to the guard who was standing a few feet away. Once I went to put my ID back in my wallet and realized I had gained entrance to a very secure area using my green American Express card. 
The company I once worked for, at a smaller branch office - during the rounds of layoffs, with clever MBA consultants analyzing staffing needs - the teletype had gone years ago, as had the actual switchboard, everyone had direct in-dial, faxes were slowly being replaced by email, so they directed the general fax line to Accounting, etc. Who needs a receptionist?
So they locked the door, and a phone extension with no outside call capability was put beside a staff directory in the lobby, and you had to phone your contact to come get you. That lasted about 6 months or less. After a few complaints from important visitors when someone was in a meeting or away from their desk in the plant, and ta-da - we had a receptionist again.
I should point out the clever analysts also neglected to consider that anyone who had been there long enough to survive all the layoffs was entitled to 3 or 4 weeks vacation, and someone had to cover their job.
So, how common is this outside of Manhattan? They also have oddball customs like doormen that are rare in other parts of the country.
My limited experience, it depends on the security level needed. After retiring I did IT tech support for smaller companies, and generally it ranged from a front counter with a receptionist that you could walk past or around, to a receptionist and a door (perhaps buzz you in) to requiring passes, or being escorted. it all depended on (a) the neighbourhood and (b) the level of security of whatever work was involved - money, dangerous or expensive goods, confidential or patient information, etc.
If you’re talking about tight security at office buildings: as my posts upthread noted, I’ve seen it at several different multi-tenant office buildings in downtown Chicago, as well as at my clients’ single-tenant office building in Birmingham, AL.
I can’t speak for the office in Alabama, as I only started visiting it in 2015, but my experiences in Chicago are that things tightened up a lot, across the board, in the wake of 9/11.
When father worked at an office in London in the 1970s there was no security beyond the girls on reception, who also had to do the typing and work the switchboard. Anyone who looked plausible as a tradesman could walk in and there several instances of wallets lifted from jackets hung on a chair.
I’ve found the security in manufacturing facilities especially perceptive. At work this week, I went in as a vendor rep to a golf club factory. They had security guards checking badges at each flow point.
Yet what impressed me was that these two security guards shared their amusement in watching me gingerly walk through their camera-shot corridors out by their lines.
One of the managers told the two security guards, “Yes everyone else rambles through the factory but Eric; Mr. Diminutive doesn’t want to get hurt in this dangerous place.”
My county-government office has absolutely increased security. The lobbies on each floor used to have no barrier to anyone walking into the rear areas. Now we have walls separating the rear from the lobby with work-ID activated doors. All the staircases have card-activated doors, too. And the public need a special pass card to take the elevator to the 3rd or 4th floors. There’s a small section of my floor that’s technically a separate office and they have their own additional security.