I may have witnessed something similar. Pre-covid, I used to walk to work for several years. The shortest route took me through a parking lot for a large state office building. In the mornings, I would often see people sitting in their cars--reading, smoking, listening to the radio, whatever--but pointedly not going inside the building, at least not yet. And it was like this every day, not just occasionally. Some people were very consistent and I would see them nearly every day.

I've worked in various places, all private sector, and I couldn't remember ever seeing anything like this before. It finally occurred to me that perhaps they were deliberately waiting until the exact time when they were expected to be present to actually enter the building. The implication being that they'd prefer to sit in their cars rather than start their work day even a few minutes early.

Edit: Which, to be clear, is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned--I just had never seen or done anything like that before, and I've also never worked directly for a government agency.