Eleven years ago, Pamela Slim lay in bed with pneumonia and contemplated her dread over work. She'd been a training director at a bank in San Francisco, but a recent merger had pushed out her beloved boss and other respected colleagues. "I hadn't been aware of how much my job happiness was connected to the people I worked with," Slim, now 41, says. Slim prided herself on her reputation as a collaborator, but she'd been accused by the new regime of being "uncooperative" for not answering routine questions. "I was just being conscientious—I thought someone else could answer them better," she says today. In the end, she had to slink away like a criminal from a place she'd once loved.