Not heard at work but close enough. :)
I was recently taking a group sewing class and there was a young girl there (~13, in 8th grade) and she told me the girls in her class will keep track of what each person wears and then come up to them and tell them the last time the wore it and if they were wearing it too much.
I was horrified. Seemed like a really good reason to home school, so your kids are not exposed to such horrible behavior from mean girls.
When I was in 8th grade, there a was a girl who modeled, and she took it upon herself to visit all of the stores in the mall so that she could see what was available and where. That way, she could make fun of the other girls for wearing clothes that were out of season, or for wearing clothes that were inexpensive/came from her unapproved stores, etc.
One day, she was walking behind a friend and I and making fun of the friend because her clothes came from a discount retailer and for having a gay mom (I have no idea how these two things were linked). I shot her a dirty look and probably told her to give it a rest, at which point she turned on me and said something along the lines of, "But at least having a gay mom and cheap clothes is better than CpaCat, I bet her divorced mom has to buy all her clothes used from the thrift store, because her dad doesn't pay child support!"
I turned around and said, "That's right. All my clothes are from the thrift store. But at least I'm not a B---, like you." I was prepared to follow up with the idea that her mom was embarrassed by her, and it was good that she was pretty as long as her mouth was shut... but she immediately burst into tears, then ran to report me to the principal.
Point being - instead of pulling me out of school when people bullied me or my friends, my mom talked to me about what to do. After that incident, she used it as a tool to practice retorts that didn't involve cursing, and strategies for diffusing bad situations. It's true, that no one since then has made fun of me for wearing thrift store clothes, but there have been plenty of situations where people have tried to intimidate, put me down, been rude to me, etc. I have also been in situations where I have witnessed friends be out-right bullied at work. If my parents had shielded me from ever being put down or bullied, what tools would I have to navigate those situations today?