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It’s all around us—our co-workers are wheezing, sneezing, coughing and generally complaining about feeling under the weather. We’ve even succumbed ourselves, to the ubiquitous crud that’s “going around”.

Often, we blame our workplace. The air is unhealthy. There’s too much mold/mildew/stale air/chemicals. It’s too hot or too cold.

Researchers in the United Kingdom, though, have discovered that it’s not the building that’s making us sick—it’s our job.

Specifically, it’s the stress and lack of support we find in our workplace that has the biggest effect on our health.

Read the whole article here.

Then go out and take walk and de-stress yourself.

Does being the boss mean you can’t be friends with your employees? That’s the premise of a Jan 2004 Inc Magazine article that discusses the benefits—and pitfalls—of working with friends.

Many new managers try too hard to be chummy with their staff, a process that can backfire, as many of them learn the hard way. I had a recent question from someone at AllExperts.com about this same issue, and it’s something that most people in management roles have had to deal with at one time or another.

All things being equal, I think it’s better to err on the side of being more removed from your employees than to risk getting too close and then being unable to deal with problems that occur. You can still care and empathize and be responsive to the needs of our staff, but once you cross that line into friendship you set things up to lose both the friend and your management role.

PageBites.com is a great new resume and job search website. They crawl the web for jobs, resumes and executive bios and you can also post jobs and resumes directly on their site for free.

It’s very user-friendly, and they have a blog to keep you even more up-to-date on all things relating to your job search.

Check them out!

Michael Port is at again! He’s offering a remarkable 60-minute, content-rich teleseminar absolutely free!

If you’re a small business owner or solo-entrepeneur, you don’t want to miss this class. Michael will show you the fastest, easiest, most reliable, and super fun ways to fill up your calendar with as many paying clients as you want.

The seminar is on March 20, 2006, and registration is limited to only 98 people. I know for a fact that Michael’s seminars always fill up fast, so don’t delay. Click here now to sign up and get all the information you will need to Book Yourself Solid! And tell Michael I said “Hi!”

Cathy Goodwin, over on her blog Great Career Moves, had an interesting posting the other day.

The Wall Street Journal had a story about a woman who accepted a verbal job offer, then, before reporting for the new job, sent the company an e-mail saying she didn’t want to take the job after all.

The WSJ thought the woman’s actions were terribly unprofessional; Cathy Goodwin disagreed, saying, in effect, that verbal agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and the company was at fault for relying on a verbal contract.

I disagreed with Cathy’s assessment of the situation, believing that the woman was most at fault, and that the company was well rid of someone so unprofessional and cowardly.

You can read our entire discussion on Cathy’s blog, but I’m interested in what my readers think about the whole situation. Post your comments below, or e-mail me personally with your “take” on the whole e-mail/no e-mail, verbal agreement thing.