Yeah, they still talk about it out here. There’s a memorial in front of the Edmond Post Office (77034). Was this the event that triggered the now common phrase Going Postal -? I don’t know. I don’t recall any media frenzies about workplace shootings before this event, tho.
Anyways, just a little side point in history to most of us. An anniversary of horror and loss to a few.
gotta wonder about the state of postal workers in the early 90s, though. So many of them slaughtered co-workers relative to other occupations. “going postal” is now a well-understood phrase. So many postal workers “went postal”.
I would guess that someone somewhere has done a study of post office workers and why they would show up at work and murder their co-workers.
Here’s a screenshot of a reply in a thread we did two years ago. Kimstu dug up the info from CDC.
[quote]
Eve: What are the stats on post offices and shooting sprees?
The gummint has assembled some statistics on this, though offhand you might not expect to find them at the Center for Disease Control:
Quote:
Occupational Injury Deaths of Postal Workers – United States, 1980-1989 [additional data for subsequent years discussed below]
Extensive media coverage of work-related homicides at U.S. Postal Service facilities raised the concern about whether postal workers are at increased risk for work-related homicide, particularly from those committed by disgruntled coworkers. Based on national surveillance data, neither the Postal Service industry nor postal occupations are among the groups at increased risk for work-related homicide […]
Editorial Note: […] This analysis indicated an occupational homicide rate among Postal Service workers that did not exceed the rate for all U.S. workers.
Media attention to violence in Postal Service facilities resulted in press reports that enumerated violent incidents over a defined period (1983 through 1993). By comparing a newspaper review of occupational violence in the Postal Service (5) with cases reported in NTOF, NIOSH identified five work-related homicides not included in the NTOF database. Incorporating these five cases into the calculation of a work-related homicide rate for the Postal Service increased the rate to 0.63 per 100,000 workers, nearly equal to the average overall national rate (0.64) for the same period. However, it was not practical to similarly identify work-related homicides that were not included in NTOF for other industries; such an enumeration of missed cases would probably increase the average annual all-industries rate.
Although the occupational homicide rate for the Postal Service industry is similar to the national rate for all industries, coworkers appear to be disproportionately responsible for homicides that occur in the Postal Service.
And while the 1986 tragedy was certainly the largest of it’s kind, the phrase “going postal” doesn’t seem to appear in print until 1993.
I recall this snippet of conversation from about fifth grade:
Student: What does disgruntled mean?
Teacher: It means extremely unhappy and stressed out, and the reason it happens to post officers is that they’re overworked, underpaid, and generally treated like dirt.