ANSWERS: 4
  • It seems likely, based on the list below (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_killings), that many of the postal workers who went "postal" were fired or obviously unhappy with their jobs (usually due to lousy supervisors). I can only assume that since a lot of these people committed suicide that work related issues were the least of their problems. * August 19, 1983, Johnston, South Carolina: Perry Smith, a resigned USPS employee, charged into a postal office with a 12-gauge shotgun and began firing at workers in a hall, killing the postmaster and wounding two other employees. * August 20, 1986, Edmond, Oklahoma: Patrick Sherrill, a part-time letter carrier, enters the Edmond Postal Office and fatally shoots 14 employees and wounds another six. He subsequently committed suicide. * August 10, 1989, Escondido, California: John Merlin Taylor kills wife, then two colleagues and self at Orange Glen post office. * October 11, 1991: fired postal worker Joseph M. Harris kills his ex-supervisor and her boyfriend at their home in Wayne, New Jersey, then kills two former colleagues as they arrive at the Ridgewood, New Jersey post office where they all previously worked together. According to "Today in Rotten History," Harris was initially armed with an Uzi, pipe bomb, and "samurai sword" and was later arrested garbed in a ninja's outfit and gas mask. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He died on death row in 1996. * November 14, 1991, Royal Oak, Michigan: fired postal worker Thomas McIlvane kills four, wounds five, kills self. * May 6, 1993, Orange County, California: Fired postal worker Mark Richard Hilbun kills his mother, then shoots two workers at Dana Point post office, killing one. Serving life term. * May 6, 1993, Dearborn, Michigan: Postal worker Larry Jasion kills one, wounds three, then kills self at a post office garage. * March 21, 1995, Montclair, New Jersey: former postal worker Christopher Green, highly indebted, kills four and one while robbing post office. Serving life term. * July 9, 1995, City of Industry, California: postal worker Bruce William Clark kills supervisor with gun he concealed in paper sack. Serving 22 years for second-degree murder. * September 2, 1997, Miami Beach, Florida: 21-year postal employee Jesus Antonio Tamayo shoots ex-wife and friend, whom he saw waiting in line, then killed himself. * April 17, 1998, Dallas, Texas: letter carrier Maceo Yarbough III fatally shoots a clerk after an argument. Found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, ordered to mental health facility. * January 30, 2006, Goleta, California: former mail processor Jennifer San Marco, 44, kills six employees (five immediately, another died later. A possible seventh victim, a former neighbor, was found dead in her apartment and has yet to be confirmed to be of the same shooting. Marco committed suicide at the sorting facility. April 4, 2006, Baker City, Oregon: Letter carrier Grant Gallaher entered the federal building in this Eastern Oregon city Tuesday afternoon intending to kill postmaster Michael McGuire. Unable to find McGuire, Gallaher left the building and shot 49-year-old co-worker Lori Hayes-Kotter several times at close range. Gallaher had been a postal employee for 13 years and Hayes-Kotter for 17. Another source (http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/24798/?page=1) states: "One reason the whole rage murder phenomenon may have started with post offices is that the 800,000-employee-strong service, the nation's second-largest employer, was one of the earliest and largest agencies in the post-New Deal era to be subjected to what was essentially a semi-deregulation and semi-privatization plan, in what the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute calls "the most extensive reorganization of a federal agency." The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, signed by Republican President Richard Nixon, aimed to make the USPS self-sufficient, running on its own profits. Before then, the USPS operated at a loss for 131 of the 160 years that it was in operation. The reform was pushed through in the wake of a growing nationwide postal worker lockout in 1970 to protest falling wages, a strike so effective that Nixon called the National Guard to New York to end it. Under the act, the postal workers union could no longer call or threaten strikes, but rather were required to solve all disputes through collective bargaining, and failing an agreement, hand the dispute over to binding arbitration. Postal workers have never gone on strike since. And the postal market was opened up to greater competition. In 1973, Federal Express started delivering. In other words, the postal service was the first post-New Deal experiment in loosening a large number of workers' rights and opening up their company" to the brutal world of competition. Today, even with competition, USPS employees earn better wages and higher benefits than FedEx employees, something that the postal service is criticized for by reformers. The U.S. Postal Service was able to function more profitably through the familiar tactics of pushing its workers to work harder and of creating an increasingly stress-jammed atmosphere, thereby squeezing more work out of them, or "increasing worker productivity" in the value-neutral language of economics. Oddly enough, the first year that the federal government stopped subsidizing the USPS, 1983, was also the year of the first post office shooting, in Johnston, South Carolina."
  • High job stress, a lack of comaraderie among fellow workers, and a lack of cooperative management, but I think most of all it became a copy cat thing. One jerk did it and others followed suite.
  • there are disgruntled employees in every career field and every business. people are always shooting their bosses no matter what the business is. to say that the postal service is the only business with disgruntled employees is tunnel vision.
  • Some of them were grunge rockers.

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