Going Postal

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I have just learnt about the saying 'going postal' and I find it quite interesting. Apparently excessive stress is sometimes known as going postal. I did some research and apparently it's because of a history of US postal workers turning violent and committing murders on their colleagues. In 1993 the Us Postal Service sponsored a symposium and found that 35 have people have been killed in 11 post office shootings since 1983!In 1986 a letter carrier called Patrick Sherrill killed 14 co-workers before killing himself, in Oklahoma. In 1991 postal clerk Joseph Harris from New Jersey shot and killed his boss, 2 other USPS employees and a 4th person more than a year after being fired. A month later in Michigan, Thomas McIlvane killed 4 USPS postal workers and himself after being fired. In 1995 a former postal worker Christopher Green killed 2 postal employees and 2 customers while robbing a post office in New Jersey. In 2006 Jennifer San Marco entered the mail sorting centre in California where she was previously employed and killed 6 employees and herself. The USPS report found that postal workers were more likely to be verbally abused by their co-workers and were more likely to believe their colleagues held grudges against them, nearly twice as likely to say their colleagues had mental problems, four times more likely to agree that the use of threats or violence was a more effective way of getting things done in the workplace and that many managers and supervisors try to provoke employees to violence. So I think that 'going postal' is quite a relevant saying for 'excessive stress'!