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Why Postal Employees Go Postal · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:13
Speaker 1: Oh Boys, can be a long year. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
0:17
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know.
0:24
Speaker 1: May be long year, that the year is always the
0:26
Speaker 1: same length. I almost forgot the word podcast in the intro.
0:29
Speaker 1: That's an indicator it's gonna be a long year. We're
0:32
Speaker 1: only going to do subjectively. We're only going to do
0:35
Speaker 1: this a hundred more times. Yeah, but we just did
0:39
Speaker 1: one and three, so a hundred more d one more.
0:43
Speaker 1: I think we do a hundred and four a year,
0:44
Speaker 1: do we? Jerry? Yeah, because it's fifty two weeks times two.
0:49
Speaker 1: That's what I meant, So we've done one. I was
0:52
Speaker 1: just joking by hundred two more. Look bored, That's what
0:58
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Long year, buddy. Jerry's got on her principal shoes.
1:03
Speaker 1: She does. Josh just made Jerry walk up and down
1:05
Speaker 1: the hall so I could hear the clip clop of
1:08
Speaker 1: her of a wooden heel, and it definitely made me
1:11
Speaker 1: like I had a little PTSD of like, oh boy,
1:15
Speaker 1: someone's coming after us. It sounded like the principal was
1:17
Speaker 1: coming and we were in the office. We were smoking
1:19
Speaker 1: in the boys room, which I never did. I never
1:23
Speaker 1: did either, man, even when I was a high school smoker,
1:25
Speaker 1: I was like, are you out of your mind? Smoking
1:28
Speaker 1: the lobby in the I'd like escape, you know, campus
1:33
Speaker 1: the smoke or whatever. Was there a smoking section at
1:36
Speaker 1: your now, I wasn't that. What am I like your age?
1:40
Speaker 1: I don't think there was by the time I got
1:42
Speaker 1: there either, but I definitely remember maybe the first year
1:45
Speaker 1: or so. But I definitely remember when my sister was
1:48
Speaker 1: at my high school, she's six years older, there was
1:50
Speaker 1: a smoking area by the dumpster and like that's where
1:53
Speaker 1: they had a roped off her students could go smoke,
1:55
Speaker 1: and they're crazy, it's awesome. They're like, hey, we know
1:59
Speaker 1: it's a long day. If you need to go, if
2:01
Speaker 1: you need to go light up, just do it over here.
2:04
Speaker 1: That's the official place. Yeah, you need to go cool
2:07
Speaker 1: it up cools, yeah, or go feel alive with pleasure
2:13
Speaker 1: this newport. Yeah. I think so. I did smoke on
2:16
Speaker 1: a plane a couple of times. I was on one
2:20
Speaker 1: flight that I remember that had smoking, an international flight,
2:24
Speaker 1: and it was like, it's crazy. Yeah, there's no barrier,
2:28
Speaker 1: no partition, no nothing. It's just these are the roads
2:30
Speaker 1: that you consider in and smoke, which is all based
2:33
Speaker 1: the whole plane is a smoking section. Yeah, point, it
2:35
Speaker 1: is crazy. It's always funny when I see movies where
2:38
Speaker 1: people are smoking on busses and planes and restaurants, and
2:42
Speaker 1: it's really different time, different day, different era. Speaking of
2:47
Speaker 1: a different time, I guess it qualifies as a different time. Um,
2:53
Speaker 1: I think today, Chuck, that we should talk about in
2:57
Speaker 1: the era when people went postal trite and I'm looking
3:00
Speaker 1: at something up relevant. By the way, I'm not just
3:04
Speaker 1: checking my email right now. Well, I'll tap dance for us. Then. Well,
3:08
Speaker 1: I was just curious if there was a band called
3:10
Speaker 1: Going Postal, not if, but how many there were. And
3:14
Speaker 1: I just typed in going Postal band, and uh, I
3:18
Speaker 1: see quite a few Facebook pages called going Postal band,
3:23
Speaker 1: Twitter accounts going postals, some with an end with a
3:27
Speaker 1: little apostrophe going postal. Those are the little more loosey goosey,
3:32
Speaker 1: like Jimmy Buffett style, like yacht rocky. Yeah so yeah,
3:36
Speaker 1: of course people would take something horrific like workplace shootings
3:40
Speaker 1: and turn it into a band name. Dude, not only
3:42
Speaker 1: a band name. There's a franchise of male centers like
3:45
Speaker 1: where you get your mail sent to called going postal
3:48
Speaker 1: or got really nationwide franchise. Interesting, any article that you
3:54
Speaker 1: read about the post office, it will be called like
3:57
Speaker 1: going postal. Like it's completely been co opted and removed
4:02
Speaker 1: from his context, so much so that I would guess
4:04
Speaker 1: our younger listeners aren't fully aware of where that whole
4:08
Speaker 1: thing comes from. Yeah, And I think not that it's
4:12
Speaker 1: cool and acceptable, but I think the reason it's even
4:15
Speaker 1: allowed to happen to name things this now is because
4:19
Speaker 1: we are now in an era where that term uh
4:23
Speaker 1: as we'll learn in this podcast, and we've talked about
4:26
Speaker 1: the golden age of skyjacking and the golden age of
4:29
Speaker 1: this and that there was a weird golden age of
4:33
Speaker 1: postal workers shooting up their workplaces and it hasn't happened
4:38
Speaker 1: that much since then. And so that's what I think
4:41
Speaker 1: has allowed people to be like, hey, good band name. Huh.
4:44
Speaker 1: So I think because no one would call a band
4:47
Speaker 1: school shooter now, you know, because that's the active horrific
4:52
Speaker 1: thing going on. But it's the same thing. And you
4:54
Speaker 1: could make a really good argument or case that it
4:57
Speaker 1: grew out of the shooting. These were the first workplace
5:02
Speaker 1: mass shootings that America is exposed to. And I would
5:05
Speaker 1: put to you not that people don't shoot up post
5:08
Speaker 1: offices any longer, but that when it does happen, it
5:11
Speaker 1: is no longer even remotely as newsworthy as it once was,
5:15
Speaker 1: because at the beginning, we didn't understand what the heck
5:18
Speaker 1: was going on. Now we understand firsthand, all of us,
5:22
Speaker 1: anybody who has a job in America now understands what's
5:26
Speaker 1: going on. And it's also spread from beyond the post
5:28
Speaker 1: office into offices around the country, businesses around the country,
5:33
Speaker 1: and even into schools. Some people, yeah, some people make
5:39
Speaker 1: the argument that neoliberalism is to blame, and I'm okay
5:44
Speaker 1: with that, and that will explore that more later. Yeah, liberalists,
5:49
Speaker 1: did you like I'm trying new things in the two
5:51
Speaker 1: thousand twenty? Uh? Did you practice your delivery or all? Right? Well,
5:56
Speaker 1: but I nailed it. I think I think so too.
5:59
Speaker 1: I know that podcast on is looming on neoliberalism. It's
6:04
Speaker 1: long been on your list, So just a matter of
6:07
Speaker 1: getting around to it. I don't know how, maybe how
6:12
Speaker 1: about five years from now? Alright? Within the next five years,
6:16
Speaker 1: let's say that if we are still blessed enough to
6:18
Speaker 1: be doing this job. You keep saying that because apparently
6:21
Speaker 1: every time you do ten years passes and everybody's like,
6:24
Speaker 1: aren't can you believe that you even said that? So
6:26
Speaker 1: I just keep saying that because I want to keep
6:28
Speaker 1: doing this. I think it's gonna neat to think about,
6:30
Speaker 1: like having a twenty plus year partnership. Like there might
6:36
Speaker 1: be a podcasting Hall of Fame one day we can
6:39
Speaker 1: go visit it exactly, look at Mark Marin and uh,
6:42
Speaker 1: Karen and Georgia. Maybe they'll give us a senior discount.
6:47
Speaker 1: All right, So we should talk about and did you
6:50
Speaker 1: write this one? Actually no, Dave Rouse did. Oh man,
6:53
Speaker 1: he did a great job. And the way he put
6:55
Speaker 1: together the story I think works. Well, we're gonna follow
6:58
Speaker 1: this format. Why not? Uh, if it ain't broke, don't
7:01
Speaker 1: fix it. That's right, that's my mom tra And how
7:04
Speaker 1: long are you going to do that? It's like January,
7:07
Speaker 1: gonna do it all this month? So he starts off
7:10
Speaker 1: with a story of a man named Patrick Henry Cheryl,
7:13
Speaker 1: forty four year old man in Oklahoma City. His known
7:18
Speaker 1: in his neighborhood as crazy pat. He was a big dude.
7:22
Speaker 1: He was a loner um. He had a lot of
7:26
Speaker 1: He ticked a lot of boxes when it comes to
7:29
Speaker 1: mass shootings. He was basically like Pile from full mental
7:32
Speaker 1: jacket when he was in Yeah, it sounds like, yeah.
7:35
Speaker 1: He was a loner um. He had been caught as
7:37
Speaker 1: a peeping tom um. He hurt animals. He would tie
7:40
Speaker 1: cats and dogs defenses with baling wire. Not nice at all.
7:46
Speaker 1: He was shy, he was awkward, didn't have a lot
7:48
Speaker 1: of friends. He joined the Marine Corps, which is where
7:52
Speaker 1: he learned how to shoot que private Pile once again.
7:56
Speaker 1: And then after the Marines, he moved on with his
7:58
Speaker 1: mom and when she died in he was alone with
8:02
Speaker 1: his Ham radio. I don't want to throw any shade
8:05
Speaker 1: at Ham Radio, at the Hams out there, because remember
8:08
Speaker 1: we found out in our episode on Ham radios that
8:11
Speaker 1: like they are the most courteous, that's right, like civic
8:14
Speaker 1: minded people around. So this is a bad apple, right right.
8:18
Speaker 1: He doesn't exemplify the Ham radio community. And I didn't
8:20
Speaker 1: even want to mention that, but the idea of him
8:23
Speaker 1: alone with his Ham radio bears mentioning it. You can't
8:25
Speaker 1: obfuscate the truth. He's got to bring it out, address it,
8:29
Speaker 1: and then you know, keep going. That's the man. In
8:34
Speaker 1: eighty four he enlisted in the National Guard of Oklahoma. Uh.
8:38
Speaker 1: And in he started work, as you know what, a
8:44
Speaker 1: postal carrier in Edmund, Oklahoma. Right. So, he Um, by
8:50
Speaker 1: all accounts, was a I don't know if disturbed is
8:54
Speaker 1: the right word, but maybe it is. Certainly it's a
8:57
Speaker 1: less balanced individual than than probably the average person for sure. Um.
9:03
Speaker 1: So when he was told that he Um was going
9:08
Speaker 1: to be fired if he didn't shape up, he wasn't
9:11
Speaker 1: super great at his job now, he wasn't according to
9:13
Speaker 1: his supervisors. He would deliver mail the wrong address. Um,
9:17
Speaker 1: he would be late to work a lot, and he
9:20
Speaker 1: was given a notice like you're gonna be fired if
9:24
Speaker 1: you don't, if you don't start doing what we want
9:27
Speaker 1: you to. Uh. The next day he showed up to
9:32
Speaker 1: work and without saying a word. This is what makes
9:35
Speaker 1: this one so creepy, he went to his supervisor, he
9:39
Speaker 1: went to find the postmaster and he shot them without
9:42
Speaker 1: saying a word. And he started moving around his workplace
9:46
Speaker 1: at this Edmund, Oklahoma post office, and within fifteen minutes
9:50
Speaker 1: had killed fifteen people, including himself. Yeah. Um. Side note
9:56
Speaker 1: one of those people was the grandson of Notre Dame
9:59
Speaker 1: football coach New Rockney. Um. People were locking themselves in vaults. Uh,
10:04
Speaker 1: they survived, so he didn't kill everyone in the office,
10:07
Speaker 1: which you might be asking, why is the post office
10:09
Speaker 1: have a vault stamps? Yeah, they really care about those stamps.
10:14
Speaker 1: They do valuable. They are people hiding in offices and
10:19
Speaker 1: under their desks, and by the time the swat team
10:23
Speaker 1: gets there, they find him dead at his desk. He
10:26
Speaker 1: went to his desk and killed himself. Right, So fifteen minutes,
10:31
Speaker 1: killed fifteen people, including himself, and did it without saying
10:35
Speaker 1: a word. From what all people are saying. Yeah, and
10:38
Speaker 1: this was, um, one of the bloodiest events in American
10:43
Speaker 1: history mass shootings at the time. Um, there were a
10:46
Speaker 1: couple before this, but this was pretty early on in
10:50
Speaker 1: mass shootings. Um. Yeah, America had not really been fully
10:54
Speaker 1: acquainted with mass shooting. Kid. They were so rare, so
10:59
Speaker 1: rare that they were huge, huge, huge stories. And they
11:02
Speaker 1: also seemed like total anomalies, not the very beginnings of
11:05
Speaker 1: a pattern that was starting to emerge. That's not what
11:08
Speaker 1: people thought of these things at the time. They you couldn't.
11:11
Speaker 1: If you go back and like watch Dan Rather reporting
11:14
Speaker 1: on this, he can't make heads or tails of it.
11:16
Speaker 1: It's just the most senseless thing. That's what they use. Senseless, nonsensical, insensible,
11:22
Speaker 1: like they just couldn't understand it. Yeah. The one um,
11:25
Speaker 1: of course, the famous sixties six clock tower sniper and
11:29
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas. Have you ever seen that
11:31
Speaker 1: documentary on that. It's done in like the animation, through
11:35
Speaker 1: the animation software like in Waking Life, and somehow it
11:38
Speaker 1: makes it even more disturbing. I have not seen that,
11:42
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna see it because this stuff fascinates me.
11:45
Speaker 1: UMO one, I don't know if we should ever cover
11:48
Speaker 1: that one. The one that mcdonald'son California was just horrific.
11:53
Speaker 1: That and the difference between that one and most of
11:55
Speaker 1: these take place over it always seems like it's like
11:58
Speaker 1: six minutes, ten minutes, twelve minuts. The one at the
12:01
Speaker 1: McDonald's was seventy seven minutes of just bloodshed and shooting.
12:06
Speaker 1: It was awful, It was so uh, but they were
12:10
Speaker 1: still anomalies. They were anomalies. And this was the first
12:13
Speaker 1: one that took place in an office. The New York
12:17
Speaker 1: Daily News said, Cheryl put a new wrinkle to this
12:19
Speaker 1: kind of violence. He brought it into the office, right,
12:22
Speaker 1: So he was not the first postal carrier to come
12:26
Speaker 1: to his workplace and shoot up the place, right. Um,
12:31
Speaker 1: he he targeted like the back office. But there there
12:34
Speaker 1: have been a couple before I saw, even going back
12:36
Speaker 1: into the seventies, where postal workers had come to work
12:39
Speaker 1: and shot the place up, usually targeting a supervisor. Yeah,
12:43
Speaker 1: and it's it was never this many people, I think
12:45
Speaker 1: was one of the big differences. That's a huge difference. Yeah.
12:48
Speaker 1: The one in South Carolina, three I think, was just
12:51
Speaker 1: one person um killed with the twelve gauge. The postbaster
12:57
Speaker 1: barricaded himself in a storage room I ronically of a
13:00
Speaker 1: convenience store. You'll see why later. So just put a
13:03
Speaker 1: pin in that, but was actually killed in the convenience
13:06
Speaker 1: store across the street. Yeah, and actually it wasn't just him.
13:09
Speaker 1: There were other people barricaded in that convenience store storage
13:12
Speaker 1: room with him, but he was the only one he shot.
13:15
Speaker 1: And that's a pattern that started to emerge. The more
13:18
Speaker 1: people started looking into these things, the more they were
13:21
Speaker 1: like a lot of these are They're not random. These
13:24
Speaker 1: guys let people live that they could have easily killed,
13:27
Speaker 1: and they went out of their way to find people
13:30
Speaker 1: who they did kill or tried to kill. And a
13:33
Speaker 1: lot of times it would be their supervisor or the postmaster,
13:36
Speaker 1: somebody who was in charge of bossing them around, or
13:39
Speaker 1: possibly a co worker who had you know, um, gotten
13:43
Speaker 1: a promotion instead of them. Yeah, that happened specifically in
13:46
Speaker 1: one case, and another guy was stalking a co worker
13:50
Speaker 1: and he came to work, UM, and I think he
13:53
Speaker 1: didn't end up killing her, Is that right? No, he
13:55
Speaker 1: killed killed a male employee instead. So by the time
14:00
Speaker 1: this Edmunds, Oklahoma, a lot of people will point to
14:03
Speaker 1: that is like, that's not the first postal shooting. This
14:07
Speaker 1: is the one that really started to catch everybody's attention. Yeah,
14:10
Speaker 1: from eighty six to ninety nine, there were fifteen different
14:12
Speaker 1: incidences or incidents, But you were right by the way,
14:19
Speaker 1: I know, but it's just a mouthful. Um. That involved
14:23
Speaker 1: current or former postal workers killing coworkers thirty four people
14:29
Speaker 1: over a thirteen year period, which included that fourteen in Oklahoma. Yeah,
14:34
Speaker 1: a lot of people point to is the peak of
14:38
Speaker 1: the going postal era, not even necessarily because of all
14:41
Speaker 1: the bloodshed that year, I mean there were some in
14:44
Speaker 1: ninety three, but more just the way that it leached
14:48
Speaker 1: into the cultural consciousness by that time, I think was
14:52
Speaker 1: when it first appeared in print. To write. Ninety three
14:55
Speaker 1: was when it appeared in print in the St. Petersburg,
14:58
Speaker 1: Florida Times. And ironically, they were talking about a symposium
15:02
Speaker 1: on workplace violence that was sponsored by the United States
15:06
Speaker 1: Postal Service, and the article says, um which has seen
15:10
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service has seen so many outbursts that
15:14
Speaker 1: in some circles, excessive stress is known as going postal.
15:17
Speaker 1: This is that same year Seinfeld debuted I think they
15:22
Speaker 1: debuted Newman as a character, and they basically said he's
15:27
Speaker 1: a postal worker and referenced postal workers going crazy. Sure, um,
15:33
Speaker 1: who would you who would you like to be? I'll
15:36
Speaker 1: be Newman? Okay, who are you? I gotta be George? Then,
15:41
Speaker 1: I mean you had to tell the people that's what
15:43
Speaker 1: I mean. Oh, I see, I thought you were presenting
15:47
Speaker 1: me with a fake choice. Now let me this is George.
15:50
Speaker 1: Let me ask you something. What do you do for
15:52
Speaker 1: a living? Newman? That's my George? I mean United States
15:56
Speaker 1: postal worker. Aren't those of the guys that always go crazy.
16:00
Speaker 1: He come back with a gun and shoot everybody sometimes
16:05
Speaker 1: remember that scene, so do I went and looked at it.
16:07
Speaker 1: There's actually more to it. Did. They ask him why,
16:11
Speaker 1: and Numan actually explains it, and there's actually a lot
16:13
Speaker 1: of water to his explanation. It will turn out, he says,
16:17
Speaker 1: the mail never stops. Mail never stops, right, it's always coming.
16:21
Speaker 1: It's always and then it's publisher's clearing house weak or
16:24
Speaker 1: something like that. He's like it never. They have to
16:26
Speaker 1: like snap him out of like this tirade that he
16:28
Speaker 1: goes on. But it's it's actually supposedly part of what
16:32
Speaker 1: was responsible for this phenomenon, the ceaseless pressure to constantly
16:37
Speaker 1: move the mail as fast as possible. I've been watching
16:39
Speaker 1: Seinfeld a lot lately. Yeah, yeah, what do you think?
16:42
Speaker 1: It's great? It holds up pretty well, holds up pretty well. Yeah,
16:45
Speaker 1: it's it's and it's funny to hear Larry David um
16:50
Speaker 1: because this was before I knew. I knew he created Seinfeld,
16:53
Speaker 1: but before Curbs, so I didn't know what he looked
16:54
Speaker 1: like or sounded like. And he's his voice a lot
16:57
Speaker 1: like he's a voice of Steinbren and there's a couple
17:00
Speaker 1: of other things, like they'll just be a random off
17:03
Speaker 1: screen line and it's Larry David and now watching it,
17:06
Speaker 1: it just cracks me up. It's but yeah, it holds
17:08
Speaker 1: it pretty well. Obviously, it's some of it. We're in
17:11
Speaker 1: different times now. Some of it's kind of like untoward
17:15
Speaker 1: but not too bad. Okay, I'll just say that, Yeah,
17:21
Speaker 1: it was. It was the nineties. No, I know, it's
17:23
Speaker 1: a different era, different era, and that was even the
17:25
Speaker 1: emergence of the PC era. But compared to today, it's
17:30
Speaker 1: it's like like you can't see that kind of stuff. Um,
17:33
Speaker 1: should we take a break or you got I got
17:35
Speaker 1: one more cultural reference. There was a um, there was
17:38
Speaker 1: a Simpsons and I don't know what year it came out,
17:40
Speaker 1: but I'll bet it was around where, um, Flanders and
17:46
Speaker 1: Homer become like best friends because Flanders takes Homer to
17:48
Speaker 1: a football game and Flanders learns that he can't stand Homer.
17:53
Speaker 1: It doesn't like to be around him, and he has
17:55
Speaker 1: a dream where where he climbs a clock tower with
17:58
Speaker 1: a gun and starts shooting at Everybody's like, there's Homer,
18:01
Speaker 1: there's another Homer. There's Homer, and one of the people
18:04
Speaker 1: he shoots at is a postal carrier who drops his
18:07
Speaker 1: mail bag and produces like an assault rifle and starts
18:10
Speaker 1: shooting back. And it's just the most casual thing that
18:13
Speaker 1: requires zero explanation whatsoever, because by this time everyone knew
18:18
Speaker 1: going postal mail carriers. They're not just like some friendly
18:21
Speaker 1: guy who you know, gets you know, chased off by
18:23
Speaker 1: a dog every once in a while is the worst
18:25
Speaker 1: thing that happens. This guy is like on the verge
18:27
Speaker 1: of cracking and killing everybody, and he comes to my
18:30
Speaker 1: house every day, like what is going on? And this
18:32
Speaker 1: is when that kind of started to really rise to
18:36
Speaker 1: the surface, that that question. Yeah, and like you hinted at,
18:39
Speaker 1: I'm glad you picked this because it's there. Uh. As
18:42
Speaker 1: it turns out there is something to it. It wasn't
18:44
Speaker 1: just coincidence. And we'll talk a little bit more about
18:47
Speaker 1: that in other cases spread after this. All right, So,
19:11
Speaker 1: like we said, most of these killings occurred roughly over
19:15
Speaker 1: eighty six to about ninety seven UM, but they date
19:19
Speaker 1: back to eighty three and as late as two thousand
19:21
Speaker 1: six UM. One of another big famous one was Thomas McIlvaine.
19:30
Speaker 1: He was in Michigan. Yeah, Royal Loac, Michigan, just above Detroit. Yeah.
19:34
Speaker 1: This guy was martial arts enthusiast and he was in
19:37
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps as well, and he was discharged dishonorably
19:42
Speaker 1: for running over a car with a tank. Okay, so
19:46
Speaker 1: I was watching I read that as cat by the way.
19:49
Speaker 1: The first like three times I read this running over
19:51
Speaker 1: a cat with the tad, I was like, oh my god,
19:53
Speaker 1: but it was a carcharged him not as bad unless
19:57
Speaker 1: there was a cat in the car to he was driving. Yeah,
20:02
Speaker 1: tuneses knew about going postal. Um. So there's a documentary
20:08
Speaker 1: out there called Murdered by Proxy How America Went postal,
20:11
Speaker 1: And they go to great lengths to to basically say
20:17
Speaker 1: Thomas McIlvaine was not totally off his rocker, like he
20:21
Speaker 1: was considered by his coworkers. Still today, people who were
20:26
Speaker 1: there when he came and shot up the place, victims
20:30
Speaker 1: of his shooting. Still some of them will say, I
20:34
Speaker 1: don't condone what he did, but I totally understand it.
20:37
Speaker 1: And when he was yes, because he was treated so
20:40
Speaker 1: poorly by the management and so aggressively poorly and hostily
20:45
Speaker 1: that that they basically said like this was just a
20:48
Speaker 1: powder kig waiting to happen. And when they heard that
20:51
Speaker 1: this was going on, they didn't know who it was not.
20:53
Speaker 1: They said, like, we didn't just think I was Tom
20:56
Speaker 1: Tom McIlvaine. They said, it could have been any one
20:58
Speaker 1: of us because this this, this, this was so toxic there. So, yes,
21:04
Speaker 1: it's easy to characterize him as a wing nut because
21:07
Speaker 1: he shot up his post office and killed a bunch
21:09
Speaker 1: of people. But there are other people who were there
21:12
Speaker 1: who say, that's that's that's not a full picture of
21:15
Speaker 1: of who he was. Yeah. I mean if there's a
21:18
Speaker 1: situation where there is a um, a workplace shooting and
21:22
Speaker 1: a hundred percent of the people don't go, oh, well
21:25
Speaker 1: it was this guy, uh, then it might bear looking
21:30
Speaker 1: into the to the workplace environment. Again not condoning in
21:33
Speaker 1: any way, but it's like he it's just interesting to
21:38
Speaker 1: think about and once we see the reports that came
21:40
Speaker 1: out later, like I said, there are some weight to
21:42
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. UM ninety three, I mean mclevaine,
21:46
Speaker 1: I guess we should say, um in six minutes, killed
21:50
Speaker 1: four people, wounded for others, killed himself. He let off
21:53
Speaker 1: a hundred rounds of shells in six minutes. That's I
21:57
Speaker 1: can't imagine what that must have been. Like. Dude, that
21:59
Speaker 1: my Donald's guy had an oozy I know, I I
22:03
Speaker 1: there are very few people that I hate, but I
22:05
Speaker 1: hate that man. I hate him. Yea, it was. He
22:09
Speaker 1: was a despicable human being. Yeah. So ninety three was
22:14
Speaker 1: and I remember this actually, Um, there were two post
22:19
Speaker 1: office shootings on the same day. I remember I was
22:22
Speaker 1: in college at the time, and it was in the
22:24
Speaker 1: middle of the going postal era, all the headlines and
22:27
Speaker 1: I remember two of them happened on the same day,
22:29
Speaker 1: and it was almost I mean, it was horrific, but
22:32
Speaker 1: it was almost like this weird, like you gotta be
22:34
Speaker 1: kidding me. Yeah, exactly. Um, And you know this was
22:39
Speaker 1: back pre widespread internet even, and it was still like
22:43
Speaker 1: a big deal on campus, everyone talking about. Yeah. I
22:46
Speaker 1: can imagine, um, because I think it confirmed this general
22:50
Speaker 1: suspicion that had been confirmed officially that there's something going
22:55
Speaker 1: on and there's something to this going postal thing. Yeah.
22:57
Speaker 1: And one of them was not a mail carrier, and
23:00
Speaker 1: one of them was a mechanic, right, and another that
23:04
Speaker 1: was passed over for a promotion killed two people wounded
23:07
Speaker 1: two others. His name is Larry Jason, and this is
23:10
Speaker 1: the one who killed the woman who got his job. No,
23:13
Speaker 1: he was he went after the woman. Oh no, no, no,
23:15
Speaker 1: you're right. I'm sorry. I think he wounded her. I
23:17
Speaker 1: don't know if he killed her. Oh yeah, I wounded
23:20
Speaker 1: two people, Yeah, including supervisor and the woman. He killed
23:23
Speaker 1: two people and then wounded two others. And then the
23:25
Speaker 1: other guy was Mark Hillburn in California. He killed his
23:30
Speaker 1: mother and her home before going to the post office.
23:33
Speaker 1: And he's the one that was looking for a woman
23:36
Speaker 1: that he was stalking. She wasn't there, so he killed
23:38
Speaker 1: someone else, right, he was. That's actually kind of an
23:41
Speaker 1: atypical case that you could you could make a case
23:44
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily qualify going postal because he wasn't disgruntled by
23:49
Speaker 1: being mistreated or whatever. Right, it was a stalking thing,
23:52
Speaker 1: which is bad enough. Workplace homicide involving stalking is horrible. Yeah,
23:58
Speaker 1: as far as going postal, look, it probably doesn't actually qualify. Yeah.
24:03
Speaker 1: And then two thousand six, it was a pretty interesting one.
24:06
Speaker 1: Um because mass shootings very rarely are at the hands
24:10
Speaker 1: of a woman. But Jennifer San Marcos in Goalita California,
24:15
Speaker 1: which is just outside Santa Barbara. Um, and this was
24:19
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six. She killed how many people here? Six?
24:24
Speaker 1: I believe she killed six coworkers, and notably, all six
24:29
Speaker 1: of them were people of color. Yeah, this is in
24:31
Speaker 1: two thousand six. She was a very disturbed individual, had
24:34
Speaker 1: put out a lot of signs to her employers, including
24:38
Speaker 1: having to be carted away literally in a male cart
24:42
Speaker 1: in handcuffs from the postal sorting facilities. She worked at
24:47
Speaker 1: UM and committed for seventy two hours again involuntarily. UM.
24:52
Speaker 1: And she came back years later and killed six people
24:56
Speaker 1: on a rampage. She was known to be extraordinarily racist
24:59
Speaker 1: and just about just like racist stuff and mentally ill
25:03
Speaker 1: to write to herself. Um. So yeah, she she basically
25:07
Speaker 1: raised a lot of red flags, and I guess they
25:09
Speaker 1: let her go and then she surprised everybody by coming
25:12
Speaker 1: back years later. Yeah. And side note, Um, she applied
25:16
Speaker 1: for her permit at one point in her life to
25:17
Speaker 1: publish a newspaper called The Racist Times, and I guess
25:21
Speaker 1: they were like na, Well, she applied for a business
25:25
Speaker 1: license to to to start a company to publish that. Yes, yeah,
25:31
Speaker 1: and I guess was rightfully denied. Yeah, I guess I
25:34
Speaker 1: don't know. Can you can you as a local government
25:38
Speaker 1: say like free speech? Yeah, I would think so, especially
25:41
Speaker 1: to local governments, but maybe she just didn't have especially
25:44
Speaker 1: in two thousand five. Yeah, who knows. Yeh. By the way,
25:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna apply. One of my goals is to be
25:49
Speaker 1: a notary. Oh really, I heard Nick Thune became one.
25:53
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, that's a very he said. Everything I
25:56
Speaker 1: read in two thousand and twenties, going to get a
25:58
Speaker 1: receipt sign means newspapers, magazines, receipts. So I guess he's
26:03
Speaker 1: gonna be he's gonna notarize everything. Yeah. I got something
26:06
Speaker 1: notarized the other day. And then I don't think you
26:08
Speaker 1: can notorize your own stuff or can. It seems unethical. Yeah.
26:11
Speaker 1: So it's not like I want to do it, because
26:13
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't need notaries that much. It's
26:15
Speaker 1: not like to save time. But I just thought, what
26:17
Speaker 1: an interesting, weird, kind of fun thing, you know, Chuck Bryant, podcaster,
26:22
Speaker 1: notary public. I think you should get that like wrapped
26:26
Speaker 1: around your minivan. Yeah, you know, I'd have to get
26:30
Speaker 1: a mini. Step one is getting a minivan. This is
26:33
Speaker 1: your list for get a minivan, become a notary, get
26:37
Speaker 1: a rap saying as much on your minivan. Have you
26:40
Speaker 1: seen that suv here on the parking deck, the Kim
26:43
Speaker 1: Brothers karate that's wrapped. That's great because the whole side
26:47
Speaker 1: of it is this guy getting a stomach kick and
26:50
Speaker 1: he's just like in silhouette photo. Now it's a full
26:55
Speaker 1: on photo. Very it was like the size of the
26:57
Speaker 1: whole backseat door and advertise and Kim Brothers kind of
27:01
Speaker 1: te it's very, very awesome. It worked for him. It's
27:04
Speaker 1: pretty good. The rap worked. They're like, that was well spent.
27:07
Speaker 1: And by the way, I wouldn't charge for my notary
27:09
Speaker 1: services either. That's the whole It's not like to make extra.
27:12
Speaker 1: It's not a side hustle, okay. But the thing is
27:14
Speaker 1: is like people don't value stuff that they get for free.
27:18
Speaker 1: My notary did it for free. She even came into
27:21
Speaker 1: work early to do it. And I was like what, oh,
27:23
Speaker 1: she said nothing. I went no seriously, and she said,
27:27
Speaker 1: I'm running for judge. She handed me a thing she said,
27:29
Speaker 1: just vote for me. Okay, So that's not freek Like,
27:31
Speaker 1: that's illegal, that's quid pro quo quid pro quo? Oh,
27:36
Speaker 1: you don't even know what that means? Just kidding, Yeah,
27:39
Speaker 1: it's Spanish. Right. Um. My daughter was watching she Frozen
27:49
Speaker 1: in Spanish the other day and I went to change it.
27:52
Speaker 1: She went, no, I want to leave it in Spanish.
27:53
Speaker 1: She said, s A P, s A P. And then
27:55
Speaker 1: she came out going. I was like, what are you doing?
27:58
Speaker 1: She said, I'm speaking Spanish? So what she speaking Spanish
28:01
Speaker 1: and you just didn't understand or was it gibberish? It
28:03
Speaker 1: was gibberish, But I said, you know who speaks Spanish,
28:06
Speaker 1: said Jerry's daughter. She went really, I said, yeah, And
28:11
Speaker 1: so is she gonna learn Spanish now to speak to
28:12
Speaker 1: Jerry's At some point? She's she's going to I don't
28:15
Speaker 1: know when, but I'm gonna get her going. You know
28:17
Speaker 1: what I want to do. I want to go on
28:19
Speaker 1: some like archaeological trip to the Middle East and then
28:22
Speaker 1: we'll overhear some scholars speaking Aramaic and you'll realize that
28:27
Speaker 1: that's what I was saying. After she watched Frozen two,
28:30
Speaker 1: just like in in uh in Um, what was this
28:33
Speaker 1: the movie? And not only is it Aramaic, but it's
28:36
Speaker 1: like the location of Jimmy Hoffa's body, or right now
28:38
Speaker 1: the Aramaic or like the Holy Grail, what was the
28:42
Speaker 1: the Exorcist? Oh sure, yeah yeah, or she'sn't maybe yeah,
28:46
Speaker 1: like some ancient tongue, should we take a break, had
28:52
Speaker 1: taken a break like seven minutes ago? All right, we're
28:55
Speaker 1: gonna take a break, and we're gonna go. Uh. It's
28:57
Speaker 1: actually a good spot because we're gonna talk about whether
29:00
Speaker 1: not there was something to going postal credit to this.
29:23
Speaker 1: Let's get serious again, because you would think that after
29:27
Speaker 1: these sort of a series of shootings over a period
29:30
Speaker 1: of about a decade, even though that final one was
29:32
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, it was a bit of an
29:34
Speaker 1: outlier that there would be big investigations into what's going
29:37
Speaker 1: on at the US Postal Service and did that happen?
29:43
Speaker 1: There was, but it was ill conceived. Yeah, let's talk
29:46
Speaker 1: about it. Okay. So by this time, when people are saying,
29:49
Speaker 1: like going postal it's a thing. Your postal carrier is
29:52
Speaker 1: gonna snap and shoot up your whole family or whatever,
29:54
Speaker 1: the Postal Service realizes it has a pr problem on
29:57
Speaker 1: its hands exactly. So they hire a warmer Secretary of
30:01
Speaker 1: Health and Human Services named Joseph California, Joseph Califano Jr.
30:07
Speaker 1: And he leads a commission. He chairs a commission to
30:09
Speaker 1: look into this going postal thing and to the great
30:12
Speaker 1: relief and four million dollars payment that of the Postal Service.
30:18
Speaker 1: You mean the U S taxpayer, right, yes, Um, Califano
30:23
Speaker 1: and his his UM group come back and say going
30:26
Speaker 1: postal is a myth. Yeah. And this was after a
30:30
Speaker 1: report by the General Accounting Office that did their own
30:34
Speaker 1: investigation and report. Uh. They actually issued six reports on
30:38
Speaker 1: poor labor management relations. That's just the g A oh alone. Yeah,
30:42
Speaker 1: the toxic work environment there. Um. And so the US
30:46
Speaker 1: Postal Service, via our money, like you said, threw down
30:49
Speaker 1: four million bucks to try and clean that report up, right,
30:52
Speaker 1: And and so the Califano report is what it's called.
30:55
Speaker 1: It was pretty clever, and it's in its goals and execution, Yeah,
30:59
Speaker 1: for sure. Basically said we're gonna look at the CDC
31:02
Speaker 1: stats about workplace deaths and workplace homicides in particular, and
31:08
Speaker 1: we're gonna just compare stuff statistically. And they did, and
31:11
Speaker 1: they found that not only is it not particularly dangerous
31:16
Speaker 1: to work at the post office, but that some other
31:19
Speaker 1: professions like, um, working as a convenience store clerk, that
31:23
Speaker 1: was the irony that I said to put a pin in.
31:26
Speaker 1: Or working as a taxi driver is far, far riskier
31:32
Speaker 1: as far as your chances of being killed in a
31:34
Speaker 1: homicide go a hundred and fifty times likely. Or if
31:37
Speaker 1: you're a taxi driver, then a postal worker eight times
31:41
Speaker 1: as much if you're a retail worker. And basically most
31:44
Speaker 1: of those are convenience store clerks, like killed during a robbery, yeah, exactly,
31:48
Speaker 1: or watch a postal postmaster get killed in your supply rooms. Right,
31:52
Speaker 1: either way, not a good day at work. I wonder
31:55
Speaker 1: which one that qualified for for the CDC because it
31:59
Speaker 1: was in a convenient but it was a postal service employee.
32:02
Speaker 1: I think it would be reflexive, meaning it would be
32:05
Speaker 1: could have to be at your workplace. I think it
32:08
Speaker 1: would qualify. Has having been a both maybe at that
32:14
Speaker 1: point I think the s he's like, fine, both, this
32:16
Speaker 1: is just too convoluted. Yeah. I picture like a meeting
32:19
Speaker 1: with a bunch of people sitting around smoking cigarettes, kind
32:22
Speaker 1: of debating this one, and then one guy just sticking
32:24
Speaker 1: a big bite of a club sandwich is saying, just
32:26
Speaker 1: throw it in both, right, They're like, this is after
32:29
Speaker 1: the new Gingrich Bob bar era, So we're not even
32:31
Speaker 1: allowed to use the word gun in the report. We
32:33
Speaker 1: have to just say homicide by bang bang bang bang. Um.
32:40
Speaker 1: So the California Fano report comes out, and again it's
32:44
Speaker 1: at the very least pretty convenient reading of statistics by
32:49
Speaker 1: the Postal Service. It is, and they basically said they
32:52
Speaker 1: had a press release, they held like all sorts of interviews,
32:55
Speaker 1: and they had California was respected, you know, like government servant.
33:00
Speaker 1: Public servant come out and say no, not only is
33:02
Speaker 1: this a bad rap for the post office going postals
33:05
Speaker 1: a myth? And to work at the post office, why
33:08
Speaker 1: you couldn't find a safer place to work in the
33:10
Speaker 1: United States. CDC statistics bear it out here. It is
33:13
Speaker 1: in black and white. And the press aid it up
33:16
Speaker 1: because the idea that America and American culture was wrong,
33:19
Speaker 1: that our intuition had gotten it wrong, and that actually
33:22
Speaker 1: it turns out that the whole thing is a myth.
33:24
Speaker 1: You and I would eat that up normally, but we
33:26
Speaker 1: get the even greater pleasure of saying that the Califano
33:30
Speaker 1: report was a myth and that that's where a lot
33:34
Speaker 1: of people's reporting stops even today if you look up
33:36
Speaker 1: going postal and the idea of working at the post
33:39
Speaker 1: office being dangerous, some reporting stops right there. That the
33:42
Speaker 1: Califano report proved that it was a myth, and it
33:46
Speaker 1: turns out that other people came along and said, this
33:48
Speaker 1: Califano report is way off, and here's the truth. Going
33:52
Speaker 1: Postals actually quite real. It's just that the Califano Commission
33:57
Speaker 1: went at it from the wrong direction. Well kind of
33:59
Speaker 1: purpose flee, yeah, not kind of purposely, very much purpose
34:02
Speaker 1: for four million dollars purposefully. Yeah. Notably the one man
34:06
Speaker 1: named Stephen uh Misasako. He's a I don't even know
34:10
Speaker 1: what accident that wasn't been off a couple of weeks.
34:13
Speaker 1: You can tell he is a thirty four year veteran,
34:16
Speaker 1: or was at the time of the USPS worked, it
34:20
Speaker 1: says here nearly every capacity. I think. He had a
34:22
Speaker 1: lot of jobs at the Postal Service, and he wrote
34:25
Speaker 1: a book called Beyond Going Postal, Chuck. We should also
34:28
Speaker 1: say that his one of those jobs is very important.
34:31
Speaker 1: He was a workplace improvement analyst, and one of the
34:36
Speaker 1: things that he was responsible for doing was figuring out
34:39
Speaker 1: what caused workplace violence at the post office. So he
34:42
Speaker 1: wasn't just like, you know, just some guy who had
34:45
Speaker 1: some ideas. Like this guy had learned firsthand what was
34:47
Speaker 1: really going at the post office, and he saw this
34:49
Speaker 1: Califano report as a whitewash. Yeah, I mean, he he said,
34:53
Speaker 1: And he used their own statistics, but he also used
34:56
Speaker 1: his own you know, personal experience u uh, anecdotal from
35:01
Speaker 1: his own point of view, and the research he did
35:03
Speaker 1: as that workplace improvement analyst, and he was like, you know, um,
35:09
Speaker 1: let's look at the stats. The National Institute of Occupational
35:12
Speaker 1: Safety and Health, part of the CDC, said that of
35:16
Speaker 1: worker on worker homicides in the eighties were postal employees,
35:21
Speaker 1: even though they account for three quarters of one percent
35:24
Speaker 1: of the civilian workforce. So three quarters of a percent
35:27
Speaker 1: of the workforce is responsible for thirteen percent of the
35:31
Speaker 1: worker on worker workplace homicides. Yeah, and I think he
35:35
Speaker 1: was the I don't know about the first but one
35:36
Speaker 1: of the major voices that was saying, Okay, so you
35:40
Speaker 1: might get killed more often as a taxi driver, but
35:44
Speaker 1: not by another taxi driver, right, And the very definition
35:47
Speaker 1: of going postal, it's not Mary lou hinter walking in
35:50
Speaker 1: and shooting Judd Hirsch in the taxi bay. That would
35:55
Speaker 1: be going postal exactly, or going taxi. Sure, well, it's
35:58
Speaker 1: still be going postal. I guess it applied everywhere, but
36:02
Speaker 1: it means a worker on worker, usually homicide, almost always
36:07
Speaker 1: in the workplace, usually related to work. I can't believe
36:10
Speaker 1: that it took someone to write a book to point
36:12
Speaker 1: this out and why everyone was going to wait a minute,
36:15
Speaker 1: A convenience store employee getting robbed and killed is not
36:19
Speaker 1: the same as going in there and shooting up your office. Yeah,
36:22
Speaker 1: I know, it's kind of bizarre. I'll bet the alternative
36:24
Speaker 1: press was all over it. But it took this time
36:26
Speaker 1: to come along and write this book and be like, hey, hey,
36:28
Speaker 1: let me spell it out for you. So that was
36:31
Speaker 1: one thing was he just basically said, hey, like, yes,
36:34
Speaker 1: going postal is real, and here's the stats that prove it. Yeah,
36:38
Speaker 1: and here's why. Yeah, that was basically it's a pretty
36:42
Speaker 1: toxic environment. They did a certain the Califano report itself
36:46
Speaker 1: did a survey of twenty postal employees on their culture
36:50
Speaker 1: and compare that to national averages and other professions. And
36:55
Speaker 1: this is stuff, like I said, it's in the Califano Report.
36:58
Speaker 1: That said, uh, postal workers scored way way lower than
37:02
Speaker 1: the national average and all seven areas of positive attitude
37:05
Speaker 1: towards management, yeah, including it was a big sticking point,
37:08
Speaker 1: including like do you agree with the statement I am
37:11
Speaker 1: confident in the fairness and honesty of management? They're like, no, no,
37:16
Speaker 1: not really. Do you feel like you have autonomy at work?
37:19
Speaker 1: That was a big one. No, but everyone, not nobody.
37:21
Speaker 1: But they scored thirty nine favorable rating compared to the
37:24
Speaker 1: national average of seventy seven, so basically half as much.
37:28
Speaker 1: YEP said that they felt that they had autonomy or
37:31
Speaker 1: any kind of um ability to direct their own work
37:35
Speaker 1: or self. Yeah, and it's I wonder why, but it
37:38
Speaker 1: seems like the Postal Service, more than other jobs, had
37:42
Speaker 1: a culture and it seems like they've tried to correct it.
37:46
Speaker 1: But um so, I can't speak to like the current status,
37:50
Speaker 1: but when I worked there in the eighties, it seems
37:53
Speaker 1: like it had this weird culture of management being militaristic
37:57
Speaker 1: and talking down and dressing down employees in front of
38:00
Speaker 1: other employees. Yeah, so that was it, I mean, plain
38:03
Speaker 1: and simple, like, that was the style. It was a
38:05
Speaker 1: kind of I saw it described as a paramilitary style.
38:09
Speaker 1: And one of the big through lines that I think
38:12
Speaker 1: made a lot of postal workers and probably still do,
38:14
Speaker 1: but definitely did in the eighties and nineties feel helpless, powerless,
38:19
Speaker 1: and pushed to the brink was that they were um.
38:23
Speaker 1: They were subservient to their supervisors, who whose direct orders
38:28
Speaker 1: they had to follow. So imagine if imagine first, Jerry's
38:33
Speaker 1: our boss. Okay, step two. Imagine if if we said
38:38
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do an episode ongoing postal and Jerry said,
38:41
Speaker 1: I order you not to do that. I don't want
38:44
Speaker 1: you guys talking about that. You can't do it well.
38:46
Speaker 1: And you gotta add you're not doing two podcasts week now,
38:48
Speaker 1: you're gonna do eight, okay, And and in not listening
38:53
Speaker 1: to Jerry, we could just lose our jobs just for that.
38:56
Speaker 1: She could be like, well, that's it. You didn't listen,
38:58
Speaker 1: You're fired. That It was the culture, that was the structure,
39:02
Speaker 1: and I think still is at the post office. You
39:04
Speaker 1: had to follow a direct order from your supervisor, just
39:08
Speaker 1: like in the military. You had a choice. You either
39:10
Speaker 1: listened or you lost your job. That was a big one. Okay.
39:14
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like this mindset of how you
39:16
Speaker 1: are coming into work every day and you're getting this
39:18
Speaker 1: every day, multiple times a day from this person. How
39:21
Speaker 1: do you not start to kind of hate this person
39:23
Speaker 1: who keeps pushing you and pushing you. Yeah, and they
39:26
Speaker 1: were understaffed and overworked. That was a big one, working
39:29
Speaker 1: like sometimes up to eighty hours a week with Nixon
39:32
Speaker 1: had charged them with being profitable. Yeah, that's where a
39:34
Speaker 1: big turn happened. That's where neoliberalism comes in. Is this
39:38
Speaker 1: idea that um so Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act
39:42
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy one and said, by three postal service
39:47
Speaker 1: needs to turn a profit. It's no longer going to
39:50
Speaker 1: be receiving texpayer funding. It needs to make its own money.
39:53
Speaker 1: And we're gonna open up competition from private industry, which
39:56
Speaker 1: is where FedEx and ups came from. So it went
40:01
Speaker 1: from being a pretty cushy government job where you know,
40:05
Speaker 1: you're you had a pension, and you know you were
40:07
Speaker 1: taking care of you at a union all this stuff,
40:10
Speaker 1: to all of a sudden, you're like pitted in competition
40:13
Speaker 1: with like private industry, and now like you can be
40:16
Speaker 1: fired at the drop of the hat um and you
40:19
Speaker 1: have no protections any longer. It happened overnight, and a
40:22
Speaker 1: lot of people point to this as the postal service
40:25
Speaker 1: being among the first industry in the United States economy
40:31
Speaker 1: that was neoliberalized, that where competition, deregulation, all this stuff
40:36
Speaker 1: happened as like a model at the postal service first,
40:39
Speaker 1: and then it started to spread into the rest of
40:42
Speaker 1: industry the rest of the economy to where now it's
40:45
Speaker 1: just commonplace, it's just capitalism. You don't even call it
40:47
Speaker 1: neo liberal liberalism anymore, and it's just normal to us.
40:51
Speaker 1: It's just you know, dog eat dog workplace where you know,
40:54
Speaker 1: if your employer tosses you a few cents for you know,
40:58
Speaker 1: your four oh one K, you're super grateful. That is
41:00
Speaker 1: not what it was like before. And the postal service
41:03
Speaker 1: was the first group to kind of undergo this transformation.
41:06
Speaker 1: And so some people say, well, they're the first ones
41:08
Speaker 1: who had workplace shootings, And if you follow it, the
41:11
Speaker 1: workplace shooting started to get more and more prevalent as
41:14
Speaker 1: more and more of the economy was liberalized, um so
41:18
Speaker 1: much so that in the eighties, workplace shootings tripled by
41:21
Speaker 1: the by the end of the decade, And they say, well,
41:24
Speaker 1: it was because of this neoliberal um revolution that came
41:29
Speaker 1: in and just upended that safety net to where if
41:33
Speaker 1: you didn't produce produced produce, you could be tossed out
41:36
Speaker 1: on the street and nobody be held accountable for that.
41:39
Speaker 1: Some people, some people don't handle that very well, and
41:42
Speaker 1: they can snap and come in and shoot up their workplace.
41:44
Speaker 1: And that's what some people, UM explain the going postal
41:49
Speaker 1: as right. And you combine that with UH incidents of
41:53
Speaker 1: mental illness and the gun culture in this country, and
41:56
Speaker 1: this is where we are. UM. Another thing that was
41:59
Speaker 1: going on at the post office was or the postal service,
42:02
Speaker 1: was that there was not much of a There was
42:06
Speaker 1: no way to if you had an issue, to really
42:09
Speaker 1: fix it. UM. Their grievance process was just ridiculous. UM.
42:14
Speaker 1: As of April two thousand and this is when the
42:16
Speaker 1: Californa report was released. UM, you would have to go
42:19
Speaker 1: to an art. You could file a grievance and go
42:21
Speaker 1: to an art and they would provide arbitration. But as
42:23
Speaker 1: of April two thousand, there were a hundred and twenty
42:26
Speaker 1: six thousand grievances awaiting arbitration, which was one grievance for
42:31
Speaker 1: every seven workers. One out of seven had it filed
42:34
Speaker 1: an official grievance. And that's not just like I'm unhappy
42:37
Speaker 1: and I'm complaining to my you know, spouse at home.
42:40
Speaker 1: There's an official filed grievance. And from what I understand,
42:43
Speaker 1: to file in official grievance was a big deal because
42:47
Speaker 1: the um your managers could retaliate against you with impunity
42:52
Speaker 1: and like harass you out of your job. Basically, yeah,
42:55
Speaker 1: well it's what we see now and for forever before
42:58
Speaker 1: this with filing aggrievance on like sexual harassment. It's like
43:03
Speaker 1: you're you're probably on the way out the door if
43:05
Speaker 1: that happened. I mean things are changing a little bit now,
43:07
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, uh so since two thousand six, Um,
43:13
Speaker 1: this has really dropped off. Um, I think only for
43:17
Speaker 1: incidents since two thousand thirteen, and two of those or
43:21
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, three of the four we're at, uh like
43:24
Speaker 1: a FedEx or ups. But I guess going FedEx isn't
43:29
Speaker 1: really catchy. Going postal, going postal is and now you
43:34
Speaker 1: can go postal let your local going postal franchise where
43:38
Speaker 1: you can pick up your mail. It's amazing and relative security.
43:43
Speaker 1: It's so bizarre. It is what a weird world in country.
43:47
Speaker 1: It's what's weird to me is like you you want
43:49
Speaker 1: this to be wrapped up somehow and it's not. It's
43:52
Speaker 1: just kind of ongoing. But it's just turned into something else. Yeah,
43:58
Speaker 1: spread it's weird. Uh, well, if you want them, we're
44:01
Speaker 1: about going Postal. You can look that up on the
44:04
Speaker 1: internet see where you come up with um. And we
44:08
Speaker 1: are aware of the game Postal. I don't know if
44:10
Speaker 1: we mentioned it or not. We didn't. It's a video game, yea.
44:14
Speaker 1: How do you how do you get away with making
44:15
Speaker 1: a game like that? I think they really enjoyed the
44:18
Speaker 1: shock value of it. You think it got The second
44:22
Speaker 1: one got banned in New Zealand and Australia. I read interesting. Okay, uh,
44:27
Speaker 1: I think long ago. It's time for listener man, I'm
44:32
Speaker 1: gonna call this a safe cracking. We got. We got
44:35
Speaker 1: a lot of good uh remarks about safe cracking, including
44:39
Speaker 1: one guy that said we did the best job of
44:40
Speaker 1: explaining how locks work. And that's I was like, really, yeah,
44:44
Speaker 1: did you listen to the same episode that we've talked about.
44:47
Speaker 1: That was high praise. It wasn't praising. Hey, guys, just
44:50
Speaker 1: listen to the safe cracking. Great work I am co
44:53
Speaker 1: host of Heist podcast about the famous heist from history
44:57
Speaker 1: plug Plug. I thought you did a solid inform a
45:00
Speaker 1: piece on safe cracking. A couple of things here, Chuck
45:03
Speaker 1: was actually correct. Some safe crackers do use a seed
45:06
Speaker 1: line torches. For example, the mysterious expert Australian safe cracker
45:10
Speaker 1: known as Mr X. Wasn't that from Arrested Development? Oh?
45:16
Speaker 1: Was it? Mr? I watched a few of those the
45:20
Speaker 1: other night too, Such a great show. Uh. It used
45:24
Speaker 1: Mr X using a seed line torch to cut a
45:26
Speaker 1: two inch hole into the safe of Carrie Packer, at
45:30
Speaker 1: the time, the richest man in Australia, to steal five
45:33
Speaker 1: and a half million dollars in gold. Uh. Two fun
45:37
Speaker 1: facts about the history of safe cracking. The Little Joker
45:40
Speaker 1: was a tool used in the early nineteen hundreds. It's
45:43
Speaker 1: a tin wheel you could place behind the combination dial
45:46
Speaker 1: of a safe and when the bank manager would enter
45:48
Speaker 1: the combination to the vault each day, it would record
45:51
Speaker 1: the combination be a little notches on the tin required
45:55
Speaker 1: a robber to break into the bank twice though wants
45:58
Speaker 1: to plan it and wants to retrieve it. But the
46:01
Speaker 1: upside is you could pull out the little joker into
46:04
Speaker 1: the combination and walk right into the vault. But you
46:07
Speaker 1: double your exposure. Yeah, but that sounds like a pretty
46:11
Speaker 1: good way to do it if you're going with double
46:12
Speaker 1: your exposure. By the way, that's safe. I bought it,
46:15
Speaker 1: came and Emily was like, we really need a different
46:18
Speaker 1: kind of safe. Really. It's like really, She's like, yeah,
46:21
Speaker 1: so now I got this stupid heavy box that I'm
46:26
Speaker 1: not quite sure what to do with him. Maybe I'll
46:28
Speaker 1: try and sell him in craigslistter something. Do you remember
46:31
Speaker 1: the combo? Uh? I don't. I haven't said it and
46:35
Speaker 1: it took and it's it is a key mainly you're
46:38
Speaker 1: also you can sell it on craigs. Have some weirdos
46:41
Speaker 1: come over to your house and buy a safe. You
46:43
Speaker 1: can maybe notorize something for the mother. They make a
46:45
Speaker 1: podcast out of this. I think this is begging for it.
46:48
Speaker 1: And then another fun fact. Baron Max Shinburne was a
46:53
Speaker 1: bank robber and machinists who took a job at the
46:55
Speaker 1: Lily Safe Company, at the time, the biggest safe company
46:58
Speaker 1: in the US during the late eighteen hundreds. He worked
47:00
Speaker 1: there for a year. Not only did he learn everything
47:02
Speaker 1: about how the safes work. He also snuck little jokers
47:05
Speaker 1: into saves before they were shipped out. And then uh,
47:09
Speaker 1: when he quit, he and his crew traveled to the
47:12
Speaker 1: s and broke into all these safes he had put
47:13
Speaker 1: the back doors into. They broke into so many Lily
47:16
Speaker 1: Safes that some say Max and his crew were single
47:19
Speaker 1: handedly responsible for putting Lily Safe Company out of business. Wow,
47:24
Speaker 1: he said. All of us at the Heist Podcast are
47:26
Speaker 1: massive fans, and that is from co host Matt Unsworth. Matt,
47:31
Speaker 1: thank you so much for that. I think you gave
47:32
Speaker 1: us so much information. There's no need for anybody to
47:35
Speaker 1: go listen to the Heist and podcast. No, I want
47:37
Speaker 1: to check yourself in the foot. Yeah, it sounds like
47:39
Speaker 1: a pretty great podcast a good heist movie, so maybe
47:41
Speaker 1: I'll like a good high Spot. I feel like a
47:42
Speaker 1: good heist movie. You're gonna love a good heist podcast,
47:46
Speaker 1: I think so. Well. Thank you for writing in for that.
47:48
Speaker 1: That was pretty great. Um let's see if you want
47:52
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us to let us know
47:53
Speaker 1: about your awesome podcast, we want to hear about it.
47:56
Speaker 1: You can go on the Stuff you Should Know dot
47:58
Speaker 1: com follow our social links there. I believe they're still there,
48:01
Speaker 1: uh and you can send us an email to Stuff
48:03
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
48:09
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48:12
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48:20
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