Here is another Workplace Survival Guide written by an expert employment lawyer, T J McHugh.
How to Beat Your Boss helps you understand where you really stand as an employee, and answer questions such as “I hate my boss. Should I resign?” or “Can my boss really treat me like that?” . Psychopaths in the workplace are a very real, very common and grossly underestimated phenomenon. They can be bosses or co-workers. Most victims don’t understand what is happening to them until things have gotten way out of control.

Let’s finish with a funny though cynic novel about  daily work. It is set in an advertising agency in Chicago.
Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To The End takes a sustained interest in the idea of the working environment and its potential to alter the behaviour of the people caught up in it.

Here is an excerpt: “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. [...] Ordinarily jobs came in and we completed them in a timely and professional manner. Sometimes fuckups did occur. Printing errors, transposed numbers.Our business was advertising and details were important. If the third number after the second hyphen in a client’s toll-free number was a six instead of an eight, and if it went to print like that, and showed up in Time magazine, no one reading the ad could call now and order today. No matter they could go to the website, we still had to eat the price of the ad. Is this boring you yet? It bored us every day.Our boredom was ongoing, a collective boredom, and it would never die because we would never die.”
As Joshua writes, “it is really irritating to work with irritating people” !

For those you prefer to watch an online workspace odysee, have a look at an original webseries The Cube Life!
You will realize that some places or colleagues can be worse than yours.

Researchers in the Netherlands have conducted a study among 1500 women across various professions to determine the frequency with which sex enters into the workplace.

In Holland, the studies found that more than one-third of women had had a sexual relationship with a colleague at work (other than their habitual partner if their partner works at the same company).

90% of those surveyed said that at least one of their work colleagues attracted them physically. Roughly 15% of those surveyed responded that they would be capable of using sex to obtain a promotion, with the reservation expressed that their boss attracted them.

In response to the question, “how would you react to a colleague putting his hands on your backside,” 3 in 10 responded that it depended on which colleague took this particular liberty.

Similar studies in the UK reveal that more than 1 in 3 female professionals have had a sexual relationship with a colleague at work, with 16 % of surveyed women indicating that they could be inclined to sleep with the boss for a promotion.

In France, roughly 25% of women have indicated having had a sexual relationship with a colleague at work and 14% of women surveyed indicated that they could conceivably sleep with the boss to secure a promotion.

Interestingly, the authors of these studies consistently focus on women. No studies have yet been published indicating what percentage of men would we willing to sleep with the boss in order to secure a promotion.

This book is a therapeutic guide to making yourself and others happy and sane at work. Because loving what you do is crucial, more productive and therefore even profitable for your maybe sick company…

Then, you may ask, why do people actively resist positive change? You shall read Change by Paul Watzlawick studying the paradoxical nature of personal change.

On the contrary, you might be a lucky and cheerful worker, which is unusual nowadays.

Your organization is based on the following advantages:
- Employees set their own working hours
- Staff decides on their own salaries
- All meetings are voluntary and open to everyone
- Employees hire their own bosses and rate them twice a year
- HR has been almost abolished

The institute for Healthy Work and the EPFZ are co-organizing a specialty diploma in the Workplace Medicine, Workplace Hygiene and ergonomics.

This new postgraduate degree — part of the Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in workplace health—is proposed jointly by the IST (part of the University of Lausanne) and the Ecole Polytechnic of Zurich.

The new curriculum which trains workplace medical staff, hygienists and ergonomics experts is the first of its kind in Switzerland (probably for good reason). The specialists are trained in the prevention and management of workplace accidents, occupational illnesses, and the insuring workplace security, thereby reducing costs related to absenteeism.

In essence, the workplace doctor is responsible for preventing and identifying occupational illnesses, as well as health problems related to employment conditions.
The hygienist is often a scientific profile, and is responsible for protecting employees at the workplace and dealing with occupational risks – chemical, pollution-related, environmental, noise, etc. – from the company’s activities. The domain of the ergonomics expert is the physical workplace environment and its tools, as well as the organization of the work such as to minimize psychological or social troubles.

The specialized curriculum is addressed mainly to professionals with jobs in the field of occupational health or who seek to find employment in work environment health, whether they be doctors, chemists, scientists, engineers, or even psychologists or social scientists.

The proposed curriculum is divided in four parts. Ten modules treat the basics of the profession (health, workplace psychology, physiology, toxicology, law, and workplace risk factors). A further eight modules are devoted to management (project management, executive management, etc.). Then a further ten modules of specialization in three domains of occupational health.

Registration is open until 30 April 2009 at the EPFZ, with coursework beginning in September 2009. Complete information is available at http://www.zoa.ethz.ch/education/continuing/masag