I work as a concierge for an office/residential building. A week or two ago, some guy from a security company showed up to check something about our setup. I showed him around and what he was doing was to look next to the hinges of our doors where what looked like a large watch battery was afixed, and then press the end of a baton-like device up against it to make a nice “boop” sound.
I have no idea what the watch battery looking thing is, nor why it would need to be booped with a baton.
My company has the same button type things scattered around. Its for the security guys at night and on weekends. They have to walk by these several checkpoints every so often and use the baton on the buttons. Its a way to have a record that the security people did indeed walk by that point at that time.
The US Post Office ues a similar system but with bar codes instead of RFID buttons. The carrier records when (s)he was where and management uses the data to ensure (s)he is keeping up the required pace.
A long time ago I read an account of a rookie cop in some mid-sized town who was introduced to such a system on the first day – he walked a beat at night, and one of his duties was to check the doors of stores, make sure they were locked, see if all looked well, etc… and another duty was to “ring in” at various points along his beat.
His sergeant was in the habit of leaving notes on the doors: “Simulated robbery” - “Simulated beak-in” and on your next ring-in, you had to call in the simulated crime.
A friend who works at the Post Office told me the story of a guy who took pictures of all the barcodes along his route with his iPhone camera. Thereafter, he simply pointed the barcode gun at his iPhone display to record each checkpoint, even though he wasn’t actually going there. Then the Postal Inspectors caught him.