Pick on someone your own size! From the school yard to the boardroom, bullying never seems to go out of style. Luckily the antics of some high-profile bruisers may have finally inspired a revolt.

LAST YEAR AN R RATING KEPT MOST TEENS FROM seeing the best movie about adolescent bullies to come along in a good while. But even from the distance of middle age, the scenes of school yard aggression in Jacob Estes' Mean Creek were enough to remind adults of the long-forgotten terrors of knuckle-dragging bullies.

Unlike most bully films, Mean Creek isn't a formulaic revenge-fest in which the downtrodden victims of bullydom rise up to crush their tormentor. Instead, Estes' film does what few American movies do: It asks why people become bullies in the first place and warns of the dangers of fighting fire with fire.

In the post-Columbine era, when we know the catastrophic results of teenage revenge fantasies, these seem like good questions. Nobody wants their children terrorized, and nobody wants to see lonely, haunted victims turning into brooding vigilantes who bring automatic weapons to school.

To address and prevent this domestic terror, children are now schooled in conflict mediation and resolution, and dozens of resources help parents and teachers deal with classroom and playground bullies. Bestsellers include The Bully Free Classroom: Over 100 Tips and Strategies for Teachers K-8 by Allan L. Beane (Free Spirit), Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do by Dan Olweus (Blackwell), and The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: From Preschool to High School--How Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence by Barbara Coloroso (HarperResource).

BUT BULLIES AREN'T JUST AT SCHOOL; THEY'VE ALSO FOLLOWED us to work. An unsettling number of bosses bully their employees, screaming, intimidating, embarrassing, threatening, harassing, nitpicking, tormenting, and sabotaging those beneath them like some banana republic tyrant.

Five years ago researchers at Wayne State University in Michigan reported that one in six U.S. workers experiences bullying on the job, while business consultant and anti-bullying trainer Richard Wellins believes that "one in 10 leaders across the country cross the line into bullying their employees." Clinical psychologist Jane Middelton-Moz takes a dimmer view of the situation. The author of Bullies: Playground to Boardroom (HCI) believes that about 90 percent of all workers have had dealings with a bully boss and that most of these bosses get away with their offenses for a good while.

The business section at the local bookstore, which usually shelves a host of advice from triumphant CEOs, now includes offerings for those faced with the bully in the corner office. The most popular include Noa Davenport's Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace (Civil Society), Gary and Ruth Namie's The Bully at Work: What You Can Do to Stop the Hurt and Reclaim Your Dignity on the Job (Sourcebooks), and Susan Futterman's When You Work for a Bully: Assessing Your Options and Taking Action (Croce).

Companies have good reasons to be worried about boardroom bullies. According to surveys conducted by the Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute of Bellingham, Washington, nearly 90 percent of those bullied at work end up losing or leaving their jobs, while more than 40 percent of them suffer from clinical depression, and a quarter contemplate violence or suicide. Corporations end up spending millions to treat stressed and depressed employees or train their replacements and have to deal with all sorts of morale and productivity issues.

Still, bully bosses usually continue their workplace reign of terror with impunity. Less than 5 percent of office bullies stop their harassment after being punished or sanctioned, and less than 10 percent are transferred or fired for their bad behavior.

ONE REASON WORKPLACE TYRANTS have free reign is that there are no laws against bullying. Employees who believe they are the victims of sexual or racial harassment, or discrimination based on ethnicity, age, disability, or, in some places, sexual orientation can take their bosses to court, but even though workplace bullying is three times more prevalent than these forms of harassment, victims of this managerial mayhem have no legal recourse.

Still, the tide could be turning. A handful of CEOs have been dragged into court of late, and even if they haven't been brought up on charges of workplace bullying, several seem to share a taste for harassing, henpecking, and humiliating their employees. Former underlings of Martha Stewart, Health-South boss Richard Scrushy, and WorldCom chief Bernard Ebber were more than happy to step into the witness box and regale juries with tales of workplace harassment, intimidation, and bullying.

And there are signs other bully bosses could be seeing the inside of a courtroom in the near future. A growing number of countries (including Canada, Great Britain, France, Australia, Norway, Sweden, and Germany) have passed laws against workplace bullies, and the idea is catching on in several states, although none has yet passed legislation. But this March an Indiana court awarded a former hospital employee $325,000 in the nation's first workplace bullying case, finding against the hospital's chief heart surgeon, Daniel Raess, who reportedly screamed and cursed at technician Joseph Doescher in response to accusations that Raess had verbally abused other employees.

IRONICALLY ENOUGH, THE WHITE House's recent attempt to appoint a bully as ambassador to the United Nations may end up doing more for the anti-bullying cause than anything else in recent history. Although President Bush argues that John "Raging Bull" Bolton is the best man for the job, former employees of the candidate describe Bolton as a "serial abuser," a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who offers blind loyalty to his superiors while intimidating and harassing those underneath.

Senate confirmations of these appointments are usually quick, but several Democrats and one Republican (George Voinovich of Ohio) held the administration's feet to the fire, looking into accusations that Bolton has chased people down corridors and screamed and thrown things at subordinates. For some reason, these senators doubt such behavior prepares someone for the job of America's chief negotiator with the U.N. Perhaps they believe that the Security Council and General Assembly--like playgrounds and workplaces--should be bully-free zones.

Even if President Bush ultimately gets his way, putting John Bolton's bullying under a Senate spotlight could do some real good. Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment didn't derail Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court appointment, but it raised our national consciousness about mistreatment of women in the workplace, and it made a lot of "good old boys" in corporate boardrooms sit up and take notice of the potential for lawsuits and scandals. John Bolton may turn out to be the poster boy for America's long awaited anti-bullying campaign. And we may even learn to use some caution before bullying the international community.

THE TEENS IN MEAN CREEK MAKE THE mistake of bullying a bully because adults abandoned them to confront the violence on their own. But we now offer our children help dealing with bullies because we no longer see bullying as some rite of passage they must negotiate on their own. Now we need to do the same for the targets of bullies on the job. Bullies don't belong on playgrounds, in the workplace, or the U.N.--they belong in museums.