A reader named Tim Wadlow writes in with an interesting theory:
I spent about 10 years as a operations management consultant, working with dirty, dull, and dangerous manufacturing companies.
After spending time at roughly 100 manufacturing locations around the world, I noticed an odd trend: the direction that employees parked in their parking spots highly correlated with employee morale and satisfaction with their jobs. Most of the cars parked forward? A good company to work for, with employees who want to get to work. Most cars backwards? It seems as though the moment that the employee got to work, he or she was planning a quick exit.
Next time you drive by a manufacturing company check it out.
Maybe CEO’s should study Google Earth maps of their parking lots to determine if they are changing a companies culture?
I love Tim’s thinking and would love to see someone test the idea empirically even though I have my doubts. The forward/reverse parking metric strikes me as too crude and too binary to tell us much of anything. But maybe I’m wrong.
One other thought: drug use is a big problem in some manufacturing plants; maybe employees who get to work stoned are more likely to park forward; and maybe that’s why companies with a lot of forward-parked cars tend to seem happier?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Anyone who has served in the Army or worked in law enforcement, fire or other emergency fields automatically backs into a spot. Fast exit is a component of training.
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I would be willing to bet that a majority of those workers drove trucks or SUV’s. Backing a truck up and out of a parking spot in a crowded lot is tough task with the blind spots, so most owners elect to back their truck into a spot so they have the forward vision while leaving. Second thought would be those driving cars and have an open spot to “drive through” to face outward would take that opportunity. Personally anytime I see an opportunity to pull ahead so I am facing forward I do it. I think most people would rather drive forward than reverse while in a lot. I am not convinced it has anything to do with morale at work.
A colleague of mine has also noticed a correlation between parking direction and distance from the building – at different times of the day of course. Lunch changes things up drawing some different conclusions.
Where I work, it’s the shirkers who park this way — the people who come in late and leave early. So I guess the more people like this a company has, the worse off it is.
On a somewhat related note, the chief scientist of a publicly traded company I used to work for once told me that if there are a lot of cars in the parking lot during the last weekend of the quarter (presumably in a dash to reach sales goals), then the stock price would always decline in the run-up to the quarter announcement. I never tried to verify this, but I always thought it would be an interesting thing to study.
Excellent observations, but there is a lot more that can be learned.
1) Age of cars,
2) Pick-up to passenger-car ratio
3) FWD to TWD ratio
4) Reserved parking places (Tekronix has no reserved parking)
5) Convertible to Hardtop ratio among passenger vehicles
6) Motorcycle and bike parking.
etc.
I usually park facing out because that’s what we did in the military and my parking lot is big enough. I normally park facing in though at home… Hmm…
It’s primarily a safety thing. The vast majority of accidents in parking lots happen when a car is backing out of a space. Take a look at a truck stop. All your trucks are parked so they can pull forward out of the space. Given that a manufacturing facility is more likely to have employees who have been truck drivers, or know truck drivers, they’ll be aware of this safety aspect, and more likely to do it.
I will almost always take a pull through spot over any other, because it is bar none the safest way to park, both getting in to the spot and pulling out. The only time I’ll forgo a pull through is when I’m going to be loading stuff in to the back of my vehicle.
I’ll expand on the the bathroom metric Bobby suggests and include the breakroom as well.
Where I taught for years the break room would get pretty messy. One staff member would be responsible for a week’s cleanup, and peer pressure was pretty effective in getting everyone to sign up. But also this meant that some people left messes knowing that someone else had to clean up later. In contrast, the bathroom was the custodian’s responsibility, and if it wasn’t up to par, he heard about it!