Another postal shooting

[Phlegm]

Last night a female former employee opened fire at a 24-hour postal service sorting facility in Goleta, California, killing six people and critically wounding another, before turning the gun on herself.

[kaharthemad]

not suprised. Nor is anyone that has worked for the USPS.

[Kramer]

dude. how can working somewhere make you that crazy. why can't these people just leave and find something else to do besides being victims for no good reason.

[Ouchyfish]

Because...they make insane money doing a VERY easy job. Federal Holidays off. Pensions. FAT paychecks...the good life...

They lose that job and see how the majority of the folks gotta live and...well, they go postal!

[Kramer]

/think to self (maybe I could do it... it can't be that bad.... the others are just weak...)

[Ouchyfish]

Kinda like how when the stock market plunges, the rich fuckers commit suicide. Same philosophy, different route.

[Martrae]

It's pretty much held over their heads every day that they aren't qualified to do any other job and they are stuck there taking shit from their bosses because they can't make the money they make there anywhere else.

Their union rules are screwy as well. It's all based on seniority. So if you have enough time in you could move into a position in charge of IT without knowing how to turn a computer on. Meanwhile, someone with IT certifications is relegated to sorting mail.

You can also get bumped from your position by someone with more seniority and if there isn't anyone you can bump on your tier then you have to take a paycut and move down a tier or two. A departmental closing can really screw your world up and you can easily wind up with a $20,000 or more a year paycut.

All this makes for a paranoid and unstable workplace. I'm surprised there aren't more shootings.

[Kramer]

hmmmmm.... insane unions making outrageous demands and weilding disproportionate power.....

maybe there will be huge firings and the closing of lots of Postal Plants while news of the Asian postal carriers have slowly taken over market share.....

[Ouchyfish]

if only

[Tikker]

It's pretty much held over their heads every day that they aren't qualified to do any other job and they are stuck there taking shit from their bosses because they can't make the money they make there anywhere else.

Their union rules are screwy as well. It's all based on seniority. So if you have enough time in you could move into a position in charge of IT without knowing how to turn a computer on. Meanwhile, someone with IT certifications is relegated to sorting mail.

You can also get bumped from your position by someone with more seniority and if there isn't anyone you can bump on your tier then you have to take a paycut and move down a tier or two. A departmental closing can really screw your world up and you can easily wind up with a $20,000 or more a year paycut.

All this makes for a paranoid and unstable workplace. I'm surprised there aren't more shootings.

that's kind of a goofy way to look at union shops

not that it's not 100% untrue, it's just 1 sided

You see the same kind of slightly different shit in non-union shops

You have people getting promoted for jobs that aren't qualified because they know so-and-so, rather than the person who actually earned the job

you have people fired cause the boss doesn't like them, etc etc

there's pro's and cons to both systems

[Minrott]

I've worked in union shops and (currently) in a non-union shop. Non of that bs happens here, but was constant at the union shop. I make more money, I have more time off, I have less deducted out of every check, and I get advanced based on my performance and not how long I've managed to stay hired. I'd never go back to a union shop.

I know exactly where I stand here when I'm standing on my own merit. Unions were nothing but a necessary evil that have passed their time, like Affirmative Action. In fact I think they're quite almost identical. Bloated bureaucratic agencies that do more to hamper good workers and help shitty ones.

[Ouchyfish]

Unions served a very noble purpose at one time but have made themselves obsolete with their corporate-minded values.

[Phlegm]

From Associated Press:

GOLETA, California (AP) -- A former postal worker shot five people to death at a huge mail-processing center and then killed herself in what was believed to be the nation's deadliest workplace shooting ever carried out by a woman.

The attack Monday night was the biggest bloodbath at a U.S. postal installation since a massacre 20 years ago.

Investigators would not release the killer's name or discuss a motive or the circumstances under which she left the Postal Service two years ago.

The rampage -- the nation's first deadly postal shooting in nearly eight years -- sent employees running from the sprawling Southern California complex and prompted authorities to warn nearby residents to stay indoors as they searched for the killer.
Sheriff: She reloaded her 9 mm handgun

Authorities found two people dead outside the plant, blocks from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Another body was just outside the door, and a fourth was just inside. Two more bodies -- including that of the killer -- were farther inside.

A sixth person was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head.

All of the woman's victims were believed to be employees at the postal center.

The woman reloaded her 9 mm handgun at least once during the rampage, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Anderson said.

The woman had not worked at the plant for more than two years, but still managed to get inside the fenced and guarded Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center, Anderson said. How she got in was under investigation.

James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston and an expert on homicides, said the death toll might be the highest for a workplace shooting carried out by a woman.

"Men, more than women, tend to view their self-worth by what they do" at work, Fox said. Men also appear more prone to use violence in seeking revenge while "women tend to view murder as a last resort," he said.

Postal employee Charles Kronick told KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara that he was inside the building when he heard shots. "I heard something that sounded like a pop, and then I heard a couple seconds later, another pop, pop, pop," Kronick said.

Kronick said his boss came running over and told him to get out of the building, and "we all hightailed it out real quick."

Some 50 to 60 employees were seen running from the plant, and many fled to a fire station across the street.

Postmaster General John E. Potter said counselors would be available to the families and employees. "Our heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to the families of the victims and to our employees who have suffered through this tragic incident," he said in a statement issued in Washington.

It was the deadliest shooting at any U.S. workplace since 2003, when 48-year-old Doug Williams gunned down 14 co-workers, killing six, and then committed suicide at a Lockheed Martin aircraft parts plant in Meridian, Mississippi.

It also was the bloodiest rampage at a U.S. postal installation since 1986, when a mailman killed 14 people in Edmond, Oklahoma, and then took his own life. Postal installations were hit with a string of deadly shootings in the mid-1980s and early '90s.

The nation's last postal shooting was in 1998, when a 27-year-old letter carrier fatally shot a post office clerk in Dallas after they argued in a break room. The gunman was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

About 300 people are employed at the Goleta plant, situated about a mile from the ocean, with the mountains as a backdrop. Goleta is about 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Employees were told to report Tuesday to another processing center in nearby Oxnard.

[Martrae]

It's pretty much held over their heads every day that they aren't qualified to do any other job and they are stuck there taking shit from their bosses because they can't make the money they make there anywhere else.

Their union rules are screwy as well. It's all based on seniority. So if you have enough time in you could move into a position in charge of IT without knowing how to turn a computer on. Meanwhile, someone with IT certifications is relegated to sorting mail.

You can also get bumped from your position by someone with more seniority and if there isn't anyone you can bump on your tier then you have to take a paycut and move down a tier or two. A departmental closing can really screw your world up and you can easily wind up with a $20,000 or more a year paycut.

All this makes for a paranoid and unstable workplace. I'm surprised there aren't more shootings.

that's kind of a goofy way to look at union shops

not that it's not 100% untrue, it's just 1 sided

You see the same kind of slightly different shit in non-union shops

You have people getting promoted for jobs that aren't qualified because they know so-and-so, rather than the person who actually earned the job

you have people fired cause the boss doesn't like them, etc etc

there's pro's and cons to both systems

I was just stating what goes on when you work for the US Postal System. As for other union shops, I haven't a clue what goes on in them nor did I say I did.

[kaharthemad]

Tikker you have not worked for the USPS so let me point it out to you. She is right. These people are subjected to this crap on a dialy basis. '

Some motherfucker not doing his job? Tough shit asshole you cant fire him you can complain to your boss and he has to file appropriate paperwork. If he is black they wont fire him because it would be racial. This sounds prejudice but it is true, wwe had a secretary (african descent) in the IT department. She sat there all day, did not answer phones and did no work what so ever. She was there because at one time someone tried to fire her for be a waste of air. She screamed racism and boom now we get her as a secretary. On the average that lazy dumbass is not going to get fired for about 24 to 36 months.

The Postal Inspectors get a hard on for you? I have seen it happen to one guy. They stand over his shoulder all day long day in and day out asking questions and ridculing how he preforms his work. At the end of the day you go back to your locker to find it ransacked and you purse/wallet/backpack rifled thru. There are tunnels above the workplaces. The workers call them mole holes. The postal inspectors walk thru there spying on the people.

Someone leave change in the pop machine? Dont touch it. If you do and your caught the Postal inspecters will arrest you for theft. Are you sure the change you pulled out of there was yours? Better hope. As a contractor we would buy a .80 20 ounce coke and leave the dimes in the bottom of the tray just to fuck with everyone else.

Have a Cisco cert? how about a MSCE>? too bad cant use it...those cushy jobs in IT goto the deserving ones who have done thier time. We realize they dont know shit from shinolla but hey...they have senority.

[Phlegm]

more on the shooting from Associated Press:

GOLETA, California (AP) -- A woman wounded in a rampage by a former postal worker died Wednesday, and investigators said the assailant also killed a former neighbor just before the attack, bringing the death toll to eight.

A former plant worker said the attacker had made racist comments in the past, and at least six of the victims were minorities, but investigators have refused to discuss a motive in the slayings.

The eighth victim, Beverly Graham, 54, was found Tuesday, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, at a Santa Barbara condominium complex where former postal employee Jennifer Sanmarco lived up until a few years ago.

Sheriff's Sgt. Erik Raney said authorities believed Graham's death was "the beginning of this rampage."

A neighbor of Graham's reported hearing a gunshot Monday evening, before Sanmarco went to the mail-processing center.


Sanmarco shot six postal employees to death and committed suicide in what was believed to be the nation's deadliest workplace shooting by a woman. It was also the nation's bloodiest shooting at a postal installation in nearly 20 years.

A postal worker who was shot in the head, Charlotte Colton, 44, died of her wounds Wednesday, said Teresa Rounds, spokeswoman for Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

Former plant worker Jeff Tabala recalled that Sanmarco seemed particularly hostile to Asians while working for the Postal Service.

He said all of the dead were minorities: Three were black, one was Chinese-American, one was Hispanic and one was Filipino.

In 2003, Tabala said, he saw sheriff's deputies pull Sanmarco out from under a mail-sorting machine and wheel her away in handcuffs on a mail cart after a disturbance.

She returned several months later but "people started coming to me and saying, 'She's acting erratically,"' Tabala said. "She was screaming. She was saying a lot of racist comments. It was pretty ugly."

Sanmarco was escorted out of the building by management and never returned, Tabala said.

"She seemed to be having conversations and there wasn't anyone around her. She'd be just jabbering away." Tabala said.

Graham's boyfriend, Eddie Blomfield, said Sanmarco would often go outside singing loudly, which led to arguments between the women. Graham's brother Les Graham Jr. said his sister had complained about a woman who "used to come out and rant and rave in front of her building."

Investigators gave no motive for the postal rampage but said Sanmarco had been put on medical leave in 2003 for psychological reasons and had to be removed from the building once.

Authorities in New Mexico, where Sanmarco moved in 2004, also described her increasingly bizarre behavior after she lost her job. Police were contacted about Sanmarco at least twice after she was accused of harassing an office worker and appearing naked at a gas station. She was dressed when officers arrived.

A deputy clerk for the city of Milan, New Mexico, said Sanmarco applied for a business license in 2004 for a publication called "The Racist Press" that she said she planned to launch.