With many returning to work today after a Labor Day break, The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports that where employees park reveals interesting insights about what companies and their employees value. In some companies, closer to the elevator is better. And management decides who gets to park closest -- although the winners in that competition vary among companies. And for some employees, the longer the walk to their desk, the better their health.

Simply put, the companies and employees described in this article have six parking lot values:

• Sales performance. Dave Beckman is the top sales executive at 200 employee San Diego, CA equipment-leasing company, Five Point Capital Inc. For the past two years, the 27-year-old's midnight-blue, 2006 Porsche 911 is parked in the spot closest to the its main entrance -- a perk the company awarded him for his strong sales performance. This makes his colleagues jealous and, the company hopes, will spur them to sell more so they can take his spot.
• Organizational rank. Although they're often empty since their occupants are at meetings away from the office, 12 spaces are allocated for top managers at MSW Research Inc. Those empty spaces are painful reminders for other employees that the company puts a distinctly lower value on the time of rank and file workers than it does on its executives'.

Working parents just got another reason to feel guilty.

A federal study has found that a child in a day care center for a year or more was more likely to become disruptive in class once they reached elementary school.

I felt guilty about planning to enroll my five-month-old son in day care when he turns one in September until I read this bit in the New York Times:

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents' guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved. ...On the positive side, they also found that time spent in high-quality day care centers was correlated with higher vocabulary scores through elementary school.

This is confusing.

Are we raising a generation of articulate brats?

Can't my son both well-behaved and have a good command on the English language? I realize that I am a fairly new parent but that's got to be doable.

Childcare isn't just an issue for parents. It affects everyone who holds a job.