But what happens when someone at the office, someone with the power to make your live miserable, kills your chance to do what you like?

An Upland native has collaborated with her husband to produce a book - actually they have created an entire network - to help employees deal with the darker side of going to work. Specifically Ruth and Gary Namie have made it their jobs to help when the office bully turns a work environment into a living hell.

Ruth Namie, neČ Ruth Wayne, is a graduate of Upland High School, Chaffey College and Scripps College. She has been a psychotherapist since 1986 with a doctorate in clinical psychology and experience as a facilitator for groups of working women.

Gary Namie, her husband of 16 years, is trained as a social-organizational psychologist and a management trainer. He has taught at a dozen colleges, including Scripps and the University of Southern California, and has been a consultant since 1985.

They are the co-authors of "BullyProof Yourself at Work," which was published in May by the couple's own DoubleDoc Press.

The book is part of an employee advocacy effort, the Namie's Campaign Against Workplace Bullying. Based in Benicia in the San Francisco Bay Area, it includes counseling, conferences and workshops, a hot line, a national board of directors, consultants and a Web site, www.bullybusters.org.

It has, Ruth Namie said, been a long journey that is nowhere near over, and the campaign is on the verge of moving into the legislative area in California. It started after her own experience with what she called a "first-class bully," while working as a psychiatric assistant at an HMO.

"I had a boss who first thought I was the most wonderful worker because I was independent and self-assured," she said. "Then people started to ask for me instead of her, and she started to pick at anything I did. There are two different ways to do therapy, and she didn't think my way was right."

Her reaction as a victim of a bully was typical. The tirades made her shoulder the blame and try to reinvent herself, but after three months she said she'd had enough.

"I finally stood up and said 'You can't do this to me anymore,'" she said. "She ran after me screaming, right in front of all the receptionists and everybody. Then she went to personnel and said she wanted to get rid of me."

The situation was settled by lawyers, and at the settlement signing Namie asked the lawyer what she did wrong. The answer - nothing, except have the misfortune to work under a boss from hell.

"A light bulb went on for me," she said. "It made me realize people really don't have to just take it."

"Ruth was a classic target," Gary Namie said. "One of the top reasons for bullies is when the target refuses to become subservient, refuses to grovel. It's all about a desperate grasp for control. It has nothing to do with the target."

They define bullying, which should be distinguished from common rudeness or incivility, as "the deliberate and repeated mistreatment of a Target (the recipient) by a perpetrator that is driven by the bully's desire to control another person."

Bullying is a form of harassment, the Namies say, and encompasses many forms of mistreatment. But unlike sexual harassment, bullying is usually not illegal, which makes it more difficult to overcome. Legal remedies, for the most part, do not exist.

But according to their research two-thirds of the work force have either been victimized by tyrants or witnessed this kind of behavior, and three-quarters of the victims report some sort of physical or emotional trauma, like stress, depression or lowered self-esteem.

All of this helps give the book its title. Their efforts started with an Internet advice column and has attracted interest in academic circles and among some labor unions.

Barbara Lee Crouch, who runs the Inland Empire human resources consulting firm Barbara Lee Crouch and Associates, said that almost 30 years after the publication of the landmark book "The Peter Principle," companies are still promoting people to their levels of incompetence.

"When I've gotten calls through the years that supervisors are that way, my recommendation is training on how to be a supervisor," said Crouch, who recently retired as Inland Empire manager of The Employer's Group. "Many don't come by it naturally, and it doesn't always work."

Many supervisors are promoted to their positions because they are productive workers, and Crouch said she encounters two different types of supervisor, the manager and the leader.

"The manager is the directive type - 'Do this, do that,'" Crouch said. "The leader says, 'Here's what needs to be done. What are your thoughts?' And they make people feel they are part of the solution."

The problems start when the manager issuing directives brings some inferiority baggage to work.

"I've generally found that these people themselves are insecure, and they cover it up by bad-mouthing others," Crouch said. "Persons secure in themselves are more open to promoting others. They know if someone under them looks good it makes them look good. But that makes some others feel threatened."

The downside is a bullied work force can lead to lousy morale and lower productivity. Ironically, the Namies said, the growth of many businesses and the economy may be fostering the bully environment.

"With the competitive drive for outcomes and the bottom line, the human consequences are being shoved aside," he said. " Look at all the commercials. They're all about the speed of business. But if you dare ask someone to slow down and consider the guy in the next cubicle, they call it psycho-babble, touchy-feely stuff."

"BullyProof Yourself at Work" offers solutions that include help from fellow employees, employee assistance programs, labor, lawyers and other resources. RuthNamie recalls that at one of her earliest jobs, as an employee trainer for a hotel in Hawaii, she did as much counseling as training.

But much of the book teaches the targets that it is not their fault. The effects can be minimalized.

"People need to know they're not alone," she said.

The book is now at the major chain bookstores, and the Namies say management and human resources professionals are starting to pay attention to this issue.

In fact, the political climate in Sacramento might make it the right time to get something on the books. A law, probably one patterned after the existing sexual harassment statutes, could protect workers from harassment and bullying if these actions create a hostile work environment that causes injury to the worker.

A labor union will loan the Namies a lobbyist this summer to work on taking the matter to lawmakers, and they plan to talk to as many human resources executives as possible.

Establishing state standards would be better than Ruth Namie's route against her HMO employer, which ended in legal proceedings.

"We don't want the target to spend time in court because that's a losing proposition," she said. "Make it policy."