Worker Morale And Parking

Freakonomics radio:

Dubner: Yeah, exactly. We lie on most surveys. But especially, 'How happy are you? And I'm the person who pays you and I need you to tell me how happy you are.' So sometimes you have to get creative. We actually put this question out to readers on our Freakonomics blog, and we got some good answers. Here's Damon Beaven, he's a software engineer in Lexington, Ky. He used to visit lots of different companies; here's how he sussed out worker morale in those places.

Damon Beaven: I looked for the number of "Dilbert" comics, and that seemed to be inverse proportional to the level of morale. A lot of "Dilbert" comics seemed to be a passive aggressive way of employee complaining.

Ryssdal: This is good. First of all, I love the Dilbert index, but also I love that we're crowdsourcing this segment now. That's awesome.
Dubner: Of course. We've cut down here, I don't know if you knew. All right, try this one: This is from a management consultant named Tim Wadlow. He visited more than 100 manufacturing companies around the world. He came to believe that parking direction is an indicator of employee morale. Here's what Wadlow saw at the companies that had low morale.

Tim Wadlow: A lot of these people seemed very anxious to leave work and often, if they got to work, they would back their cars into their parking spot. And it seemed like the moment they got to work, they were so dreading it that they were planning their escape.

Ryssdal: I like that, that's great. Now, that doesn't apply here at Marketplace world headquarters because our parking lot is mandated nose-in parking only.

This isn't a good sign for my current employer.  Pretty much everybody backs into their parking spaces.  Hopefully that is a leader-follower type of thing, and not just poor employee morale.  I know I did it just to blend in.  Anyway, I like the Dilbert quotient. 

Another thing to note: if an employee has a sign posted in his or her cubicle which reads, "I LOVE A CHALLENGE," said person probably doesn't love a challenge.  Said person probably is quoting from a classic email list of workplace euphemisms, which lists "I love a challenge" as the replacement for "This job sucks."  That's my helpful hint of the day.  I don't think that it will be a problem.