I’ve been reading the Straight Dope for years. I have all of the books. Its great reading!
Anyway, I read this question and answer and I feel that Cecil fell way short on providing an accurate answer. I understand that sometimes there is not enough data in the world to answer a question, but sadly, it seems there was plenty of data for this answer but the data chosen was meant to skew the answer a certain way.
Firstly, I understand workplace violence is a rarity. “he FBI estimated roughly 24 worker/boss killings a year; judging from the reported numbers, the USPS workplace murder rate was about three or four per year”
Three or four per year??? Thats 12.5 to 16% of all worker/boss killings during the year. The biggest question on my mind is if there is any other group (like consturction workers, or Dunkin Donut employees) that have a higher percentage. I don’t consider a gunman sticking up a 7/11 to be anything related to this question so the other 976 “workplace” killings should have been thrown away. If '92 was an era of downsizing, maybe some findings on OTHER years would be helpful.
Secondly, the two studies quoted about murder in the workplace are totally off base. “Going postal” is being murdered by coworkers, not random people off the street. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs having the highest mortality rate doesn’t mean squat as an answer unless they were killed by other taxi drivers and chauffeurs.
Thirdly, substance abuse, mental illness, a violent past, or a criminal record, all played a factor in 14 of the 15 incidents. All 14 of those people still “went postal”. How many companies out there have people with these problems working for them? Almost ALL. Screening has nothing to do with it.
Lastly, the end paragraph was the only one that actually made any logical sense in actually answering the question. Those stats listed make it seem to me working at a PO is more than “a little tense”.
I dunno. I’m a postal worker, and while I do not like either my job or the postal organization for reasons I will not get into now, I feel that the “Going Postal” phrase is unfair. I believe that the 1986 Oklahoma incident is akin to the Columbine school shootings in Colorado, horrific and well-publicized, but in many ways an anomaly.
Five years later, in 1991, you have two incidents within one month of each other, which further cemented in the minds of people that we are all a bunch of gun-toting crazies (when in truth, only some of us are ). Shortly after that, the paper coined that lovely term and the rest is history.
To relate it again back to school violence; I don’t believe schools are inherently anymore dangerous today. Rather, I think that people are hyper-sensitive about every little incident. The same can be said of the PO; the next incident of violence may be twenty years away, but as soon as it happens people will say “There they go again.” :rolleyes:
Oh, and let me be the first to say: Welcome to the boards! Enjoy your stay!
I live in the section of New Jersey that had two postal shootings in a space of four years. The first one in Ridgewood was very very strange. The second one in Montclair was done by an ex-employee who was behind in his rent. He went to the post office, shot six people (killing two employees and two customers), stole some cash and some money orders, then went home and paid his back rent with the money orders! His landlady called the police.
Here’s the Wikipedia link to a list of postal shootings.
I don’t think it was made clear enough that there have been more instances of “going postal” at the Post Office because there are few employers who have as many employees. They probably have more instances of extreem kindness, too.
That aside, I spent 15 years in a civil service job, and as much time in non-civil service jobs, too. One thing I noticed is that people who have non-civil service jobs, even if they’re in their 50’s, don’t expect to work for the same employer all the way to retirement. But in the civil service job, people in their 20’s would have long-term plans to retire with the same employer.
Essentially, the civil service workers were more upset by small changes in the workplace routine than the non-civil service workers. The non-civil service workers often had the attitude that if things get too bad, they’ll just look for another job. The civil service workers didn’t see that as an option, and thus felt more trapped.
I think we also, on some level, understand this feeling of being trapped in a job at the Post Office, but we may not think so much about it when we, for example, see a city crew cleaning a sewer. We don’t see most civil service people as being trapped, but we can easily see how postal employees can feel that way. How many opportunities are there in the private sector for someone who has sorted mail for 15 years?
The conditions of Post Office employees being trapped career-wise are something we can understand. And we see it so clearly in their case. Thus all it takes is a couple of shootings, and we have no problem calling it “going postal”.
(BTW, I saw more cases on non-lethal confrontations between workers and bosses while working in civil service than outside of civil service. These incidents are not recorded in any way.)
As a civil engineering consultant one of my clients has been the US Postal Service. When we acquired them as a client, the head of our department let us all know that we should never use the phrase “going postal.” He had used it earlier in jest and was met with very icy stares.
The USPS takes security of the mail and honesty of the employees very seriously. This extends to the point that there are separate walkways (totally walled off) with mirrored glass observation ports throughout Postal facilities so that suspect employees can be secretly watched. (These are being replaced by cameras in a lot of newer facilities.) These are accessed by an outside door and not accessible to anyone but Postal Inspectors. The Inspectors are allowed to carry weapons and it amused me when I was told that the downtown Minneapolis facility had a gun range in the basement for training and practice. I managed to keep nasty comments to myself.
This is a classic problem of small numbers. Yes, postal slayings account for a large fraction of worker/boss killings - but the point is, the numbers for both are tiny. If I live in a city that has a murder one year and two murders the next, homicide has increased 100%. But the statistic in itself means nothing; the numbers are too small to permit any conclusion except that murder is pretty rare or (returning to the question at hand) not many people get killed by co-workers. Your beef about comparing worker/boss killings to total on-the-job homicides is likewise misguided. The important thing, by any rational standard, is not the risk of getting murdered by some particular classification of killer, but of getting murdered at all.
Thanks for the clarification. When reading your column the first time around I had the same questions, but thinking about I guess in the big picture it would be very very difficult to actually find statistics like this.
I think “going postal” taps the zeitgist of 20th century ennui in a way we can all comprehend. Plus it rolls off the tongue in a way going DMV or going IRS never will. It’s close enough to mental and posthole to suggest violence beneath what seems on the surface the most benign agency in the government. It’s no wonder it’s use far exceeds it’s actual relevance.
Thanks for droppin’ by Cece
Or “going high school” which I half expected to show up in the wake of Columbine and the other massacres of high school teachers and students that preceeded it.
With 750,000 employees - I think that’s a lot, isn’t it? Not that it reduces the horror really, however at least some of the nutcases would appear to have worked for only a few weeks (and were then fired) - so it’s not like memorizing zip codes for 40 years pushed them over the edge. We had the same mailman growing up for a looong time, and he was the nicest guy ever.
I went straight to the source, and asked my letter carrier about this. He asserts that in most cases the folks “going postal” were seasonal temps at the end of their employment stint - embittered by the hectic holidays, stressed out, unstable and facing unemployment, these temps were collectively responsible for the majority of postal workplace violence.
Then again, maybe my letter carrier has some personal axe to grind against the temps.
Cecil, firstly, thanks for replying! Apparently you caused an uproar though. I guess its been a while eh?
If you lived in a city that had 1 murder one year, and that murder took place at a postal office. The next year there were 2 murders, and yet again one of those was at the post office. Despite the small numbers, I still wouldn’t want to work at the PO and I could understand someone making something up about “going postal”.
Someone else had posted about civil workers planning on retiring at their jobs and this probably has a lot to do with this. I agree, what kind of job could you get after sorting mail for 30 years?
Nevertheless, Cecil is certainly right about one thing. Getting killed, no matter how and by whom, would really stink.
Speaking of icy stares…
Back in the early 90s I was sharing rent on a house. We were cleaning out the garage, so my roommate parked out on the street in a perfectly legal spot that just happened to be in front of our mailbox. Our mailman came by and started bitching about being blocked. My roommate pointed out to him that he had to get out of the vehicle anyway so what was a couple of extra steps. They started arguing back and forth.
Just then a demon possessed me and I thought of a ‘really funny’ thing to say.
I grabbed my roommate by the shoulders and in mock seriousness said, “Andrew! He’s a postal worker! Don’t disgruntle him!!”
The look on his face made me instantly regret it. I could actually see parts of his face change color back and forth as red-with-anger fought for supremacy against white-with-shock.
I seriously worried about getting some ‘surprise’ in my mailbox for a while after that.
I never got to be a letter carrier–in fact–this is from the Wouldn’t You Know Department–I happened to have a bad limp on the day I was scheduled to have an interview for a cerrier position.
But I’d like to get some unofficial statistics from the Teeming Millions on the jobs I have held over the years, since it seems to me to be a random sampling of jobs that might or might not be likely targets of acts of violence by or against the people who do such work:
Gardener
Fast-food worker
Custodian
Data-entry operator (“boiler room”)
Data entry clerk (computer)
Mill worker (factory)
Distributor–direct selling
Child tutor
Care for disabled
Paralegal
Postal clerk (This happened in 1969, before the Postal Reorganization Act)
Carpenter’s helper
Security guard
Proctor
House painter
Census enumerator
). Shortly after that, the paper coined that lovely term and the rest is history.
