In another thread touching on workplace violence, several people mentioned “going postal” and “post-office violence.”
Is there really anything to this, statistically, or is it an urban myth? The workplace shootings I recall of late were in schools and offices (not post- ). What are the stats on post offices and shooting sprees?
The Media Literacy Review notes that there were 29 postal shootings in 13 years – not an outrageously large number, considering the number of workers in the USPS. However, they also note:
“In 1986, an Oklahoma post office worker shot and killed 15 fellow employees in less than 10 minutes. In 1989, a postal worker killed his wife at home and then drove to the post office where he shot and killed two colleagues and himself. In both October and November of 1991, two fired postal workers returned to work to kill supervisors and co-workers. It happened twice more in 1993, and twice again in 1995. It’s easy to see how the term “going postal” entered our lexicon.”
I can think of a couple of reasons why Post Offices might suffer from these types of incidents:
Postal hiring rules give preferences to miliitary veterans. So the workforce is more familiar with weaponry than your average office.
Management/labor relations are poor at the Postal Service, which makes for a lot of “disgruntled employees.”
[Newman*]"Because the mail never stops. Every day it piles up more, and more, and more and you gotta get it out but the more you get it out the more it keeps coming in, and then the bar code reader breaks, and then. . . "[/Newman]
A friend of mine works in the main postal hub in town. He says there are numerous signs & banners around the building that state: THE POSSESSION OF WEAPONS & FIREARMS ON THESE PREMISES ARE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.
Or something to that effect.
My letter carrier and the postman who delivers to my favorite bar both assure me they are quite gruntled. That’s a comfort. 
The letter carriers (the ones who actually deliver the mail to your home or business) and the postal clerks (the ones who work at the post office itself) are different groups of people, and don’t even belong to the same union. In fact, there are four separate unions: the National Association of Letter Carriers, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, the American Postal Workers Union, and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. The carriers belong to one of the first two, the clerks to one of the latter two.
Traditionally, the letter carriers have had far, far fewer labor problems than the clerks, whose unions have long had a very adversarial relationship with management. I believe that every USPS employee who has “gone postal” has been a postal clerk, not a letter carrier.
By the way, Newman on Seinfeld is a letter carrier, so when he refers to the mail piling up, and the bar code reader breaking down, that’s a script continuity problem!
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:
In other words: No, the USPS is not more homicide-ridden than US industries on average. However, when there is a homicide victim on the job in the USPS, s/he is more likely to have been killed by a co-worker.
Funny, you’d think it would be the customers who’d be the guilty parties. 
Thanks, Kimstu! From reading the papers, you’d think high shcools were the most dangerous place to be in the U.S.