January 21, 2020 • 48 mins
1993 was known as the peak of a disturbing trend in America: post office shootings, carried out by postal workers. A stunned country looked for answers and turned up a toxic workplace that seemed to be driving some workers past their breaking point.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Oh Boys, can be a long year. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know.
(00:24):
May be long year, that the year is always the
same length. I almost forgot the word podcast in the intro.
That's an indicator it's gonna be a long year. We're
only going to do subjectively. We're only going to do
this a hundred more times. Yeah, but we just did
one and three, so a hundred more d one more.
I think we do a hundred and four a year,
(00:44):
do we? Jerry? Yeah, because it's fifty two weeks times two.
That's what I meant, So we've done one. I was
just joking by hundred two more. Look bored, That's what
I'm saying, Long year, buddy. Jerry's got on her principal shoes.
She does. Josh just made Jerry walk up and down
(01:05):
the hall so I could hear the clip clop of
her of a wooden heel, and it definitely made me
like I had a little PTSD of like, oh boy,
someone's coming after us. It sounded like the principal was
coming and we were in the office. We were smoking
in the boys room, which I never did. I never
did either, man, even when I was a high school smoker,
(01:25):
I was like, are you out of your mind? Smoking
the lobby in the I'd like escape, you know, campus
the smoke or whatever. Was there a smoking section at
your now, I wasn't that. What am I like your age?
I don't think there was by the time I got
there either, but I definitely remember maybe the first year
or so. But I definitely remember when my sister was
(01:48):
at my high school, she's six years older, there was
a smoking area by the dumpster and like that's where
they had a roped off her students could go smoke,
and they're crazy, it's awesome. They're like, hey, we know
it's a long day. If you need to go, if
you need to go light up, just do it over here.
That's the official place. Yeah, you need to go cool
it up cools, yeah, or go feel alive with pleasure
(02:13):
this newport. Yeah. I think so. I did smoke on
a plane a couple of times. I was on one
flight that I remember that had smoking, an international flight,
and it was like, it's crazy. Yeah, there's no barrier,
no partition, no nothing. It's just these are the roads
that you consider in and smoke, which is all based
the whole plane is a smoking section. Yeah, point, it
(02:35):
is crazy. It's always funny when I see movies where
people are smoking on busses and planes and restaurants, and
it's really different time, different day, different era. Speaking of
a different time, I guess it qualifies as a different time. Um,
I think today, Chuck, that we should talk about in
(02:57):
the era when people went postal trite and I'm looking
at something up relevant. By the way, I'm not just
checking my email right now. Well, I'll tap dance for us. Then. Well,
I was just curious if there was a band called
Going Postal, not if, but how many there were. And
I just typed in going Postal band, and uh, I
(03:18):
see quite a few Facebook pages called going Postal band,
Twitter accounts going postals, some with an end with a
little apostrophe going postal. Those are the little more loosey goosey,
like Jimmy Buffett style, like yacht rocky. Yeah so yeah,
of course people would take something horrific like workplace shootings
(03:40):
and turn it into a band name. Dude, not only
a band name. There's a franchise of male centers like
where you get your mail sent to called going postal
or got really nationwide franchise. Interesting, any article that you
read about the post office, it will be called like
going postal. Like it's completely been co opted and removed
(04:02):
from his context, so much so that I would guess
our younger listeners aren't fully aware of where that whole
thing comes from. Yeah, And I think not that it's
cool and acceptable, but I think the reason it's even
allowed to happen to name things this now is because
we are now in an era where that term uh
(04:23):
as we'll learn in this podcast, and we've talked about
the golden age of skyjacking and the golden age of
this and that there was a weird golden age of
postal workers shooting up their workplaces and it hasn't happened
that much since then. And so that's what I think
has allowed people to be like, hey, good band name. Huh.
(04:44):
So I think because no one would call a band
school shooter now, you know, because that's the active horrific
thing going on. But it's the same thing. And you
could make a really good argument or case that it
grew out of the shooting. These were the first workplace
mass shootings that America is exposed to. And I would
(05:05):
put to you not that people don't shoot up post
offices any longer, but that when it does happen, it
is no longer even remotely as newsworthy as it once was,
because at the beginning, we didn't understand what the heck
was going on. Now we understand firsthand, all of us,
anybody who has a job in America now understands what's
(05:26):
going on. And it's also spread from beyond the post
office into offices around the country, businesses around the country,
and even into schools. Some people, yeah, some people make
the argument that neoliberalism is to blame, and I'm okay
with that, and that will explore that more later. Yeah, liberalists,
(05:49):
did you like I'm trying new things in the two
thousand twenty? Uh? Did you practice your delivery or all? Right? Well,
but I nailed it. I think I think so too.
I know that podcast on is looming on neoliberalism. It's
long been on your list, So just a matter of
getting around to it. I don't know how, maybe how
(06:12):
about five years from now? Alright? Within the next five years,
let's say that if we are still blessed enough to
be doing this job. You keep saying that because apparently
every time you do ten years passes and everybody's like,
aren't can you believe that you even said that? So
I just keep saying that because I want to keep
doing this. I think it's gonna neat to think about,
like having a twenty plus year partnership. Like there might
(06:36):
be a podcasting Hall of Fame one day we can
go visit it exactly, look at Mark Marin and uh,
Karen and Georgia. Maybe they'll give us a senior discount.
All right, So we should talk about and did you
write this one? Actually no, Dave Rouse did. Oh man,
he did a great job. And the way he put
together the story I think works. Well, we're gonna follow
(06:58):
this format. Why not? Uh, if it ain't broke, don't
fix it. That's right, that's my mom tra And how
long are you going to do that? It's like January,
gonna do it all this month? So he starts off
with a story of a man named Patrick Henry Cheryl,
forty four year old man in Oklahoma City. His known
in his neighborhood as crazy pat. He was a big dude.
(07:22):
He was a loner um. He had a lot of
He ticked a lot of boxes when it comes to
mass shootings. He was basically like Pile from full mental
jacket when he was in Yeah, it sounds like, yeah.
He was a loner um. He had been caught as
a peeping tom um. He hurt animals. He would tie
cats and dogs defenses with baling wire. Not nice at all.
(07:46):
He was shy, he was awkward, didn't have a lot
of friends. He joined the Marine Corps, which is where
he learned how to shoot que private Pile once again.
And then after the Marines, he moved on with his
mom and when she died in he was alone with
his Ham radio. I don't want to throw any shade
at Ham Radio, at the Hams out there, because remember
(08:08):
we found out in our episode on Ham radios that
like they are the most courteous, that's right, like civic
minded people around. So this is a bad apple, right right.
He doesn't exemplify the Ham radio community. And I didn't
even want to mention that, but the idea of him
alone with his Ham radio bears mentioning it. You can't
obfuscate the truth. He's got to bring it out, address it,
(08:29):
and then you know, keep going. That's the man. In
eighty four he enlisted in the National Guard of Oklahoma. Uh.
And in he started work, as you know what, a
postal carrier in Edmund, Oklahoma. Right. So, he Um, by
(08:50):
all accounts, was a I don't know if disturbed is
the right word, but maybe it is. Certainly it's a
less balanced individual than than probably the average person for sure. Um.
So when he was told that he Um was going
to be fired if he didn't shape up, he wasn't
(09:11):
super great at his job now, he wasn't according to
his supervisors. He would deliver mail the wrong address. Um,
he would be late to work a lot, and he
was given a notice like you're gonna be fired if
you don't, if you don't start doing what we want
you to. Uh. The next day he showed up to
(09:32):
work and without saying a word. This is what makes
this one so creepy, he went to his supervisor, he
went to find the postmaster and he shot them without
saying a word. And he started moving around his workplace
at this Edmund, Oklahoma post office, and within fifteen minutes
had killed fifteen people, including himself. Yeah. Um. Side note
(09:56):
one of those people was the grandson of Notre Dame
football coach New Rockney. Um. People were locking themselves in vaults. Uh,
they survived, so he didn't kill everyone in the office,
which you might be asking, why is the post office
have a vault stamps? Yeah, they really care about those stamps.
They do valuable. They are people hiding in offices and
(10:19):
under their desks, and by the time the swat team
gets there, they find him dead at his desk. He
went to his desk and killed himself. Right, So fifteen minutes,
killed fifteen people, including himself, and did it without saying
a word. From what all people are saying. Yeah, and
this was, um, one of the bloodiest events in American
(10:43):
history mass shootings at the time. Um, there were a
couple before this, but this was pretty early on in
mass shootings. Um. Yeah, America had not really been fully
acquainted with mass shooting. Kid. They were so rare, so
rare that they were huge, huge, huge stories. And they
also seemed like total anomalies, not the very beginnings of
(11:05):
a pattern that was starting to emerge. That's not what
people thought of these things at the time. They you couldn't.
If you go back and like watch Dan Rather reporting
on this, he can't make heads or tails of it.
It's just the most senseless thing. That's what they use. Senseless, nonsensical, insensible,
like they just couldn't understand it. Yeah. The one um,
of course, the famous sixties six clock tower sniper and
(11:29):
at the University of Texas. Have you ever seen that
documentary on that. It's done in like the animation, through
the animation software like in Waking Life, and somehow it
makes it even more disturbing. I have not seen that,
but I'm gonna see it because this stuff fascinates me.
UMO one, I don't know if we should ever cover
that one. The one that mcdonald'son California was just horrific.
(11:53):
That and the difference between that one and most of
these take place over it always seems like it's like
six minutes, ten minutes, twelve minuts. The one at the
McDonald's was seventy seven minutes of just bloodshed and shooting.
It was awful, It was so uh, but they were
still anomalies. They were anomalies. And this was the first
(12:13):
one that took place in an office. The New York
Daily News said, Cheryl put a new wrinkle to this
kind of violence. He brought it into the office, right,
So he was not the first postal carrier to come
to his workplace and shoot up the place, right. Um,
he he targeted like the back office. But there there
(12:34):
have been a couple before I saw, even going back
into the seventies, where postal workers had come to work
and shot the place up, usually targeting a supervisor. Yeah,
and it's it was never this many people, I think
was one of the big differences. That's a huge difference. Yeah.
The one in South Carolina, three I think, was just
one person um killed with the twelve gauge. The postbaster
(12:57):
barricaded himself in a storage room I ronically of a
convenience store. You'll see why later. So just put a
pin in that, but was actually killed in the convenience
store across the street. Yeah, and actually it wasn't just him.
There were other people barricaded in that convenience store storage
room with him, but he was the only one he shot.
And that's a pattern that started to emerge. The more
(13:18):
people started looking into these things, the more they were
like a lot of these are They're not random. These
guys let people live that they could have easily killed,
and they went out of their way to find people
who they did kill or tried to kill. And a
lot of times it would be their supervisor or the postmaster,
somebody who was in charge of bossing them around, or
(13:39):
possibly a co worker who had you know, um, gotten
a promotion instead of them. Yeah, that happened specifically in
one case, and another guy was stalking a co worker
and he came to work, UM, and I think he
didn't end up killing her, Is that right? No, he
killed killed a male employee instead. So by the time
(14:00):
this Edmunds, Oklahoma, a lot of people will point to
that is like, that's not the first postal shooting. This
is the one that really started to catch everybody's attention. Yeah,
from eighty six to ninety nine, there were fifteen different
incidences or incidents, But you were right by the way,
I know, but it's just a mouthful. Um. That involved
(14:23):
current or former postal workers killing coworkers thirty four people
over a thirteen year period, which included that fourteen in Oklahoma. Yeah,
a lot of people point to is the peak of
the going postal era, not even necessarily because of all
the bloodshed that year, I mean there were some in
(14:44):
ninety three, but more just the way that it leached
into the cultural consciousness by that time, I think was
when it first appeared in print. To write. Ninety three
was when it appeared in print in the St. Petersburg,
Florida Times. And ironically, they were talking about a symposium
on workplace violence that was sponsored by the United States
(15:06):
Postal Service, and the article says, um which has seen
the US Postal Service has seen so many outbursts that
in some circles, excessive stress is known as going postal.
This is that same year Seinfeld debuted I think they
debuted Newman as a character, and they basically said he's
(15:27):
a postal worker and referenced postal workers going crazy. Sure, um,
who would you who would you like to be? I'll
be Newman? Okay, who are you? I gotta be George? Then,
I mean you had to tell the people that's what
I mean. Oh, I see, I thought you were presenting
me with a fake choice. Now let me this is George.
(15:50):
Let me ask you something. What do you do for
a living? Newman? That's my George? I mean United States
postal worker. Aren't those of the guys that always go crazy.
He come back with a gun and shoot everybody sometimes
remember that scene, so do I went and looked at it.
There's actually more to it. Did. They ask him why,
(16:11):
and Numan actually explains it, and there's actually a lot
of water to his explanation. It will turn out, he says,
the mail never stops. Mail never stops, right, it's always coming.
It's always and then it's publisher's clearing house weak or
something like that. He's like it never. They have to
like snap him out of like this tirade that he
goes on. But it's it's actually supposedly part of what
(16:32):
was responsible for this phenomenon, the ceaseless pressure to constantly
move the mail as fast as possible. I've been watching
Seinfeld a lot lately. Yeah, yeah, what do you think?
It's great? It holds up pretty well, holds up pretty well. Yeah,
it's it's and it's funny to hear Larry David um
because this was before I knew. I knew he created Seinfeld,
(16:53):
but before Curbs, so I didn't know what he looked
like or sounded like. And he's his voice a lot
like he's a voice of Steinbren and there's a couple
of other things, like they'll just be a random off
screen line and it's Larry David and now watching it,
it just cracks me up. It's but yeah, it holds
it pretty well. Obviously, it's some of it. We're in
different times now. Some of it's kind of like untoward
(17:15):
but not too bad. Okay, I'll just say that, Yeah,
it was. It was the nineties. No, I know, it's
a different era, different era, and that was even the
emergence of the PC era. But compared to today, it's
it's like like you can't see that kind of stuff. Um,
should we take a break or you got I got
(17:35):
one more cultural reference. There was a um, there was
a Simpsons and I don't know what year it came out,
but I'll bet it was around where, um, Flanders and
Homer become like best friends because Flanders takes Homer to
a football game and Flanders learns that he can't stand Homer.
It doesn't like to be around him, and he has
a dream where where he climbs a clock tower with
(17:58):
a gun and starts shooting at Everybody's like, there's Homer,
there's another Homer. There's Homer, and one of the people
he shoots at is a postal carrier who drops his
mail bag and produces like an assault rifle and starts
shooting back. And it's just the most casual thing that
requires zero explanation whatsoever, because by this time everyone knew
going postal mail carriers. They're not just like some friendly
(18:21):
guy who you know, gets you know, chased off by
a dog every once in a while is the worst
thing that happens. This guy is like on the verge
of cracking and killing everybody, and he comes to my
house every day, like what is going on? And this
is when that kind of started to really rise to
the surface, that that question. Yeah, and like you hinted at,
I'm glad you picked this because it's there. Uh. As
(18:42):
it turns out there is something to it. It wasn't
just coincidence. And we'll talk a little bit more about
that in other cases spread after this. All right, So,
(19:11):
like we said, most of these killings occurred roughly over
eighty six to about ninety seven UM, but they date
back to eighty three and as late as two thousand
six UM. One of another big famous one was Thomas McIlvaine.
He was in Michigan. Yeah, Royal Loac, Michigan, just above Detroit. Yeah.
(19:34):
This guy was martial arts enthusiast and he was in
the Marine Corps as well, and he was discharged dishonorably
for running over a car with a tank. Okay, so
I was watching I read that as cat by the way.
The first like three times I read this running over
a cat with the tad, I was like, oh my god,
but it was a carcharged him not as bad unless
(19:57):
there was a cat in the car to he was driving. Yeah,
tuneses knew about going postal. Um. So there's a documentary
out there called Murdered by Proxy How America Went postal,
And they go to great lengths to to basically say
Thomas McIlvaine was not totally off his rocker, like he
(20:21):
was considered by his coworkers. Still today, people who were
there when he came and shot up the place, victims
of his shooting. Still some of them will say, I
don't condone what he did, but I totally understand it.
And when he was yes, because he was treated so
poorly by the management and so aggressively poorly and hostily
(20:45):
that that they basically said like this was just a
powder kig waiting to happen. And when they heard that
this was going on, they didn't know who it was not.
They said, like, we didn't just think I was Tom
Tom McIlvaine. They said, it could have been any one
of us because this this, this, this was so toxic there. So, yes,
it's easy to characterize him as a wing nut because
(21:07):
he shot up his post office and killed a bunch
of people. But there are other people who were there
who say, that's that's that's not a full picture of
of who he was. Yeah. I mean if there's a
situation where there is a um, a workplace shooting and
a hundred percent of the people don't go, oh, well
it was this guy, uh, then it might bear looking
(21:30):
into the to the workplace environment. Again not condoning in
any way, but it's like he it's just interesting to
think about and once we see the reports that came
out later, like I said, there are some weight to
some of this stuff. UM ninety three, I mean mclevaine,
I guess we should say, um in six minutes, killed
four people, wounded for others, killed himself. He let off
(21:53):
a hundred rounds of shells in six minutes. That's I
can't imagine what that must have been. Like. Dude, that
my Donald's guy had an oozy I know, I I
there are very few people that I hate, but I
hate that man. I hate him. Yea, it was. He
was a despicable human being. Yeah. So ninety three was
(22:14):
and I remember this actually, Um, there were two post
office shootings on the same day. I remember I was
in college at the time, and it was in the
middle of the going postal era, all the headlines and
I remember two of them happened on the same day,
and it was almost I mean, it was horrific, but
it was almost like this weird, like you gotta be
(22:34):
kidding me. Yeah, exactly. Um, And you know this was
back pre widespread internet even, and it was still like
a big deal on campus, everyone talking about. Yeah. I
can imagine, um, because I think it confirmed this general
suspicion that had been confirmed officially that there's something going
(22:55):
on and there's something to this going postal thing. Yeah.
And one of them was not a mail carrier, and
one of them was a mechanic, right, and another that
was passed over for a promotion killed two people wounded
two others. His name is Larry Jason, and this is
the one who killed the woman who got his job. No,
he was he went after the woman. Oh no, no, no,
(23:15):
you're right. I'm sorry. I think he wounded her. I
don't know if he killed her. Oh yeah, I wounded
two people, Yeah, including supervisor and the woman. He killed
two people and then wounded two others. And then the
other guy was Mark Hillburn in California. He killed his
mother and her home before going to the post office.
And he's the one that was looking for a woman
(23:36):
that he was stalking. She wasn't there, so he killed
someone else, right, he was. That's actually kind of an
atypical case that you could you could make a case
doesn't necessarily qualify going postal because he wasn't disgruntled by
being mistreated or whatever. Right, it was a stalking thing,
which is bad enough. Workplace homicide involving stalking is horrible. Yeah,
(23:58):
as far as going postal, look, it probably doesn't actually qualify. Yeah.
And then two thousand six, it was a pretty interesting one.
Um because mass shootings very rarely are at the hands
of a woman. But Jennifer San Marcos in Goalita California,
which is just outside Santa Barbara. Um, and this was
(24:19):
in two thousand and six. She killed how many people here? Six?
I believe she killed six coworkers, and notably, all six
of them were people of color. Yeah, this is in
two thousand six. She was a very disturbed individual, had
put out a lot of signs to her employers, including
having to be carted away literally in a male cart
(24:42):
in handcuffs from the postal sorting facilities. She worked at
UM and committed for seventy two hours again involuntarily. UM.
And she came back years later and killed six people
on a rampage. She was known to be extraordinarily racist
and just about just like racist stuff and mentally ill
(25:03):
to write to herself. Um. So yeah, she she basically
raised a lot of red flags, and I guess they
let her go and then she surprised everybody by coming
back years later. Yeah. And side note, Um, she applied
for her permit at one point in her life to
publish a newspaper called The Racist Times, and I guess
they were like na, Well, she applied for a business
(25:25):
license to to to start a company to publish that. Yes, yeah,
and I guess was rightfully denied. Yeah, I guess I
don't know. Can you can you as a local government
say like free speech? Yeah, I would think so, especially
to local governments, but maybe she just didn't have especially
in two thousand five. Yeah, who knows. Yeh. By the way,
(25:47):
I'm gonna apply. One of my goals is to be
a notary. Oh really, I heard Nick Thune became one.
Oh really, Yeah, that's a very he said. Everything I
read in two thousand and twenties, going to get a
receipt sign means newspapers, magazines, receipts. So I guess he's
gonna be he's gonna notarize everything. Yeah. I got something
notarized the other day. And then I don't think you
(26:08):
can notorize your own stuff or can. It seems unethical. Yeah.
So it's not like I want to do it, because
first of all, I don't need notaries that much. It's
not like to save time. But I just thought, what
an interesting, weird, kind of fun thing, you know, Chuck Bryant, podcaster,
notary public. I think you should get that like wrapped
around your minivan. Yeah, you know, I'd have to get
(26:30):
a mini. Step one is getting a minivan. This is
your list for get a minivan, become a notary, get
a rap saying as much on your minivan. Have you
seen that suv here on the parking deck, the Kim
Brothers karate that's wrapped. That's great because the whole side
of it is this guy getting a stomach kick and
(26:50):
he's just like in silhouette photo. Now it's a full
on photo. Very it was like the size of the
whole backseat door and advertise and Kim Brothers kind of
te it's very, very awesome. It worked for him. It's
pretty good. The rap worked. They're like, that was well spent.
And by the way, I wouldn't charge for my notary
services either. That's the whole It's not like to make extra.
(27:12):
It's not a side hustle, okay. But the thing is
is like people don't value stuff that they get for free.
My notary did it for free. She even came into
work early to do it. And I was like what, oh,
she said nothing. I went no seriously, and she said,
I'm running for judge. She handed me a thing she said,
just vote for me. Okay, So that's not freek Like,
that's illegal, that's quid pro quo quid pro quo? Oh,
(27:36):
you don't even know what that means? Just kidding, Yeah,
it's Spanish. Right. Um. My daughter was watching she Frozen
in Spanish the other day and I went to change it.
She went, no, I want to leave it in Spanish.
She said, s A P, s A P. And then
she came out going. I was like, what are you doing?
(27:58):
She said, I'm speaking Spanish? So what she speaking Spanish
and you just didn't understand or was it gibberish? It
was gibberish, But I said, you know who speaks Spanish,
said Jerry's daughter. She went really, I said, yeah, And
so is she gonna learn Spanish now to speak to
Jerry's At some point? She's she's going to I don't
know when, but I'm gonna get her going. You know
what I want to do. I want to go on
(28:19):
some like archaeological trip to the Middle East and then
we'll overhear some scholars speaking Aramaic and you'll realize that
that's what I was saying. After she watched Frozen two,
just like in in uh in Um, what was this
the movie? And not only is it Aramaic, but it's
like the location of Jimmy Hoffa's body, or right now
the Aramaic or like the Holy Grail, what was the
(28:42):
the Exorcist? Oh sure, yeah yeah, or she'sn't maybe yeah,
like some ancient tongue, should we take a break, had
taken a break like seven minutes ago? All right, we're
gonna take a break, and we're gonna go. Uh. It's
actually a good spot because we're gonna talk about whether
not there was something to going postal credit to this.
(29:23):
Let's get serious again, because you would think that after
these sort of a series of shootings over a period
of about a decade, even though that final one was
in two thousand six, it was a bit of an
outlier that there would be big investigations into what's going
on at the US Postal Service and did that happen?
There was, but it was ill conceived. Yeah, let's talk
(29:46):
about it. Okay. So by this time, when people are saying,
like going postal it's a thing. Your postal carrier is
gonna snap and shoot up your whole family or whatever,
the Postal Service realizes it has a pr problem on
its hands exactly. So they hire a warmer Secretary of
Health and Human Services named Joseph California, Joseph Califano Jr.
(30:07):
And he leads a commission. He chairs a commission to
look into this going postal thing and to the great
relief and four million dollars payment that of the Postal Service.
You mean the U S taxpayer, right, yes, Um, Califano
and his his UM group come back and say going
postal is a myth. Yeah. And this was after a
(30:30):
report by the General Accounting Office that did their own
investigation and report. Uh. They actually issued six reports on
poor labor management relations. That's just the g A oh alone. Yeah,
the toxic work environment there. Um. And so the US
Postal Service, via our money, like you said, threw down
four million bucks to try and clean that report up, right,
(30:52):
And and so the Califano report is what it's called.
It was pretty clever, and it's in its goals and execution, Yeah,
for sure. Basically said we're gonna look at the CDC
stats about workplace deaths and workplace homicides in particular, and
we're gonna just compare stuff statistically. And they did, and
they found that not only is it not particularly dangerous
(31:16):
to work at the post office, but that some other
professions like, um, working as a convenience store clerk, that
was the irony that I said to put a pin in.
Or working as a taxi driver is far, far riskier
as far as your chances of being killed in a
homicide go a hundred and fifty times likely. Or if
(31:37):
you're a taxi driver, then a postal worker eight times
as much if you're a retail worker. And basically most
of those are convenience store clerks, like killed during a robbery, yeah, exactly,
or watch a postal postmaster get killed in your supply rooms. Right,
either way, not a good day at work. I wonder
which one that qualified for for the CDC because it
(31:59):
was in a convenient but it was a postal service employee.
I think it would be reflexive, meaning it would be
could have to be at your workplace. I think it
would qualify. Has having been a both maybe at that
point I think the s he's like, fine, both, this
is just too convoluted. Yeah. I picture like a meeting
(32:19):
with a bunch of people sitting around smoking cigarettes, kind
of debating this one, and then one guy just sticking
a big bite of a club sandwich is saying, just
throw it in both, right, They're like, this is after
the new Gingrich Bob bar era, So we're not even
allowed to use the word gun in the report. We
have to just say homicide by bang bang bang bang. Um.
(32:40):
So the California Fano report comes out, and again it's
at the very least pretty convenient reading of statistics by
the Postal Service. It is, and they basically said they
had a press release, they held like all sorts of interviews,
and they had California was respected, you know, like government servant.
Public servant come out and say no, not only is
(33:02):
this a bad rap for the post office going postals
a myth? And to work at the post office, why
you couldn't find a safer place to work in the
United States. CDC statistics bear it out here. It is
in black and white. And the press aid it up
because the idea that America and American culture was wrong,
that our intuition had gotten it wrong, and that actually
it turns out that the whole thing is a myth.
(33:24):
You and I would eat that up normally, but we
get the even greater pleasure of saying that the Califano
report was a myth and that that's where a lot
of people's reporting stops even today if you look up
going postal and the idea of working at the post
office being dangerous, some reporting stops right there. That the
Califano report proved that it was a myth, and it
(33:46):
turns out that other people came along and said, this
Califano report is way off, and here's the truth. Going
Postals actually quite real. It's just that the Califano Commission
went at it from the wrong direction. Well kind of
purpose flee, yeah, not kind of purposely, very much purpose
for four million dollars purposefully. Yeah. Notably the one man
named Stephen uh Misasako. He's a I don't even know
(34:10):
what accident that wasn't been off a couple of weeks.
You can tell he is a thirty four year veteran,
or was at the time of the USPS worked, it
says here nearly every capacity. I think. He had a
lot of jobs at the Postal Service, and he wrote
a book called Beyond Going Postal, Chuck. We should also
say that his one of those jobs is very important.
(34:31):
He was a workplace improvement analyst, and one of the
things that he was responsible for doing was figuring out
what caused workplace violence at the post office. So he
wasn't just like, you know, just some guy who had
some ideas. Like this guy had learned firsthand what was
really going at the post office, and he saw this
Califano report as a whitewash. Yeah, I mean, he he said,
(34:53):
And he used their own statistics, but he also used
his own you know, personal experience u uh, anecdotal from
his own point of view, and the research he did
as that workplace improvement analyst, and he was like, you know, um,
let's look at the stats. The National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health, part of the CDC, said that of
(35:16):
worker on worker homicides in the eighties were postal employees,
even though they account for three quarters of one percent
of the civilian workforce. So three quarters of a percent
of the workforce is responsible for thirteen percent of the
worker on worker workplace homicides. Yeah, and I think he
was the I don't know about the first but one
(35:36):
of the major voices that was saying, Okay, so you
might get killed more often as a taxi driver, but
not by another taxi driver, right, And the very definition
of going postal, it's not Mary lou hinter walking in
and shooting Judd Hirsch in the taxi bay. That would
be going postal exactly, or going taxi. Sure, well, it's
(35:58):
still be going postal. I guess it applied everywhere, but
it means a worker on worker, usually homicide, almost always
in the workplace, usually related to work. I can't believe
that it took someone to write a book to point
this out and why everyone was going to wait a minute,
A convenience store employee getting robbed and killed is not
(36:19):
the same as going in there and shooting up your office. Yeah,
I know, it's kind of bizarre. I'll bet the alternative
press was all over it. But it took this time
to come along and write this book and be like, hey, hey,
let me spell it out for you. So that was
one thing was he just basically said, hey, like, yes,
going postal is real, and here's the stats that prove it. Yeah,
and here's why. Yeah, that was basically it's a pretty
(36:42):
toxic environment. They did a certain the Califano report itself
did a survey of twenty postal employees on their culture
and compare that to national averages and other professions. And
this is stuff, like I said, it's in the Califano Report.
That said, uh, postal workers scored way way lower than
the national average and all seven areas of positive attitude
(37:05):
towards management, yeah, including it was a big sticking point,
including like do you agree with the statement I am
confident in the fairness and honesty of management? They're like, no, no,
not really. Do you feel like you have autonomy at work?
That was a big one. No, but everyone, not nobody.
But they scored thirty nine favorable rating compared to the
national average of seventy seven, so basically half as much.
(37:28):
YEP said that they felt that they had autonomy or
any kind of um ability to direct their own work
or self. Yeah, and it's I wonder why, but it
seems like the Postal Service, more than other jobs, had
a culture and it seems like they've tried to correct it.
But um so, I can't speak to like the current status,
(37:50):
but when I worked there in the eighties, it seems
like it had this weird culture of management being militaristic
and talking down and dressing down employees in front of
other employees. Yeah, so that was it, I mean, plain
and simple, like, that was the style. It was a
kind of I saw it described as a paramilitary style.
And one of the big through lines that I think
(38:12):
made a lot of postal workers and probably still do,
but definitely did in the eighties and nineties feel helpless, powerless,
and pushed to the brink was that they were um.
They were subservient to their supervisors, who whose direct orders
they had to follow. So imagine if imagine first, Jerry's
(38:33):
our boss. Okay, step two. Imagine if if we said
what we're gonna do an episode ongoing postal and Jerry said,
I order you not to do that. I don't want
you guys talking about that. You can't do it well.
And you gotta add you're not doing two podcasts week now,
you're gonna do eight, okay, And and in not listening
(38:53):
to Jerry, we could just lose our jobs just for that.
She could be like, well, that's it. You didn't listen,
You're fired. That It was the culture, that was the structure,
and I think still is at the post office. You
had to follow a direct order from your supervisor, just
like in the military. You had a choice. You either
listened or you lost your job. That was a big one. Okay.
(39:14):
So that's kind of like this mindset of how you
are coming into work every day and you're getting this
every day, multiple times a day from this person. How
do you not start to kind of hate this person
who keeps pushing you and pushing you. Yeah, and they
were understaffed and overworked. That was a big one, working
like sometimes up to eighty hours a week with Nixon
had charged them with being profitable. Yeah, that's where a
(39:34):
big turn happened. That's where neoliberalism comes in. Is this
idea that um so Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act
of nineteen seventy one and said, by three postal service
needs to turn a profit. It's no longer going to
be receiving texpayer funding. It needs to make its own money.
And we're gonna open up competition from private industry, which
(39:56):
is where FedEx and ups came from. So it went
from being a pretty cushy government job where you know,
you're you had a pension, and you know you were
taking care of you at a union all this stuff,
to all of a sudden, you're like pitted in competition
with like private industry, and now like you can be
fired at the drop of the hat um and you
(40:19):
have no protections any longer. It happened overnight, and a
lot of people point to this as the postal service
being among the first industry in the United States economy
that was neoliberalized, that where competition, deregulation, all this stuff
happened as like a model at the postal service first,
(40:39):
and then it started to spread into the rest of
industry the rest of the economy to where now it's
just commonplace, it's just capitalism. You don't even call it
neo liberal liberalism anymore, and it's just normal to us.
It's just you know, dog eat dog workplace where you know,
if your employer tosses you a few cents for you know,
your four oh one K, you're super grateful. That is
(41:00):
not what it was like before. And the postal service
was the first group to kind of undergo this transformation.
And so some people say, well, they're the first ones
who had workplace shootings, And if you follow it, the
workplace shooting started to get more and more prevalent as
more and more of the economy was liberalized, um so
much so that in the eighties, workplace shootings tripled by
(41:21):
the by the end of the decade, And they say, well,
it was because of this neoliberal um revolution that came
in and just upended that safety net to where if
you didn't produce produced produce, you could be tossed out
on the street and nobody be held accountable for that.
Some people, some people don't handle that very well, and
(41:42):
they can snap and come in and shoot up their workplace.
And that's what some people, UM explain the going postal
as right. And you combine that with UH incidents of
mental illness and the gun culture in this country, and
this is where we are. UM. Another thing that was
going on at the post office was or the postal service,
(42:02):
was that there was not much of a There was
no way to if you had an issue, to really
fix it. UM. Their grievance process was just ridiculous. UM.
As of April two thousand and this is when the
Californa report was released. UM, you would have to go
to an art. You could file a grievance and go
to an art and they would provide arbitration. But as
(42:23):
of April two thousand, there were a hundred and twenty
six thousand grievances awaiting arbitration, which was one grievance for
every seven workers. One out of seven had it filed
an official grievance. And that's not just like I'm unhappy
and I'm complaining to my you know, spouse at home.
There's an official filed grievance. And from what I understand,
to file in official grievance was a big deal because
(42:47):
the um your managers could retaliate against you with impunity
and like harass you out of your job. Basically, yeah,
well it's what we see now and for forever before
this with filing aggrievance on like sexual harassment. It's like
you're you're probably on the way out the door if
that happened. I mean things are changing a little bit now,
(43:07):
oh yeah, yeah, uh so since two thousand six, Um,
this has really dropped off. Um, I think only for
incidents since two thousand thirteen, and two of those or
I'm sorry, three of the four we're at, uh like
a FedEx or ups. But I guess going FedEx isn't
(43:29):
really catchy. Going postal, going postal is and now you
can go postal let your local going postal franchise where
you can pick up your mail. It's amazing and relative security.
It's so bizarre. It is what a weird world in country.
It's what's weird to me is like you you want
(43:49):
this to be wrapped up somehow and it's not. It's
just kind of ongoing. But it's just turned into something else. Yeah,
spread it's weird. Uh, well, if you want them, we're
about going Postal. You can look that up on the
internet see where you come up with um. And we
are aware of the game Postal. I don't know if
(44:10):
we mentioned it or not. We didn't. It's a video game, yea.
How do you how do you get away with making
a game like that? I think they really enjoyed the
shock value of it. You think it got The second
one got banned in New Zealand and Australia. I read interesting. Okay, uh,
I think long ago. It's time for listener man, I'm
(44:32):
gonna call this a safe cracking. We got. We got
a lot of good uh remarks about safe cracking, including
one guy that said we did the best job of
explaining how locks work. And that's I was like, really, yeah,
did you listen to the same episode that we've talked about.
That was high praise. It wasn't praising. Hey, guys, just
listen to the safe cracking. Great work I am co
(44:53):
host of Heist podcast about the famous heist from history
plug Plug. I thought you did a solid inform a
piece on safe cracking. A couple of things here, Chuck
was actually correct. Some safe crackers do use a seed
line torches. For example, the mysterious expert Australian safe cracker
known as Mr X. Wasn't that from Arrested Development? Oh?
(45:16):
Was it? Mr? I watched a few of those the
other night too, Such a great show. Uh. It used
Mr X using a seed line torch to cut a
two inch hole into the safe of Carrie Packer, at
the time, the richest man in Australia, to steal five
and a half million dollars in gold. Uh. Two fun
(45:37):
facts about the history of safe cracking. The Little Joker
was a tool used in the early nineteen hundreds. It's
a tin wheel you could place behind the combination dial
of a safe and when the bank manager would enter
the combination to the vault each day, it would record
the combination be a little notches on the tin required
a robber to break into the bank twice though wants
(45:58):
to plan it and wants to retrieve it. But the
upside is you could pull out the little joker into
the combination and walk right into the vault. But you
double your exposure. Yeah, but that sounds like a pretty
good way to do it if you're going with double
your exposure. By the way, that's safe. I bought it,
came and Emily was like, we really need a different
(46:18):
kind of safe. Really. It's like really, She's like, yeah,
so now I got this stupid heavy box that I'm
not quite sure what to do with him. Maybe I'll
try and sell him in craigslistter something. Do you remember
the combo? Uh? I don't. I haven't said it and
it took and it's it is a key mainly you're
(46:38):
also you can sell it on craigs. Have some weirdos
come over to your house and buy a safe. You
can maybe notorize something for the mother. They make a
podcast out of this. I think this is begging for it.
And then another fun fact. Baron Max Shinburne was a
bank robber and machinists who took a job at the
Lily Safe Company, at the time, the biggest safe company
(46:58):
in the US during the late eighteen hundreds. He worked
there for a year. Not only did he learn everything
about how the safes work. He also snuck little jokers
into saves before they were shipped out. And then uh,
when he quit, he and his crew traveled to the
s and broke into all these safes he had put
the back doors into. They broke into so many Lily
Safes that some say Max and his crew were single
(47:19):
handedly responsible for putting Lily Safe Company out of business. Wow,
he said. All of us at the Heist Podcast are
massive fans, and that is from co host Matt Unsworth. Matt,
thank you so much for that. I think you gave
us so much information. There's no need for anybody to
go listen to the Heist and podcast. No, I want
to check yourself in the foot. Yeah, it sounds like
a pretty great podcast a good heist movie, so maybe
(47:41):
I'll like a good high Spot. I feel like a
good heist movie. You're gonna love a good heist podcast,
I think so. Well. Thank you for writing in for that.
That was pretty great. Um let's see if you want
to get in touch with us to let us know
about your awesome podcast, we want to hear about it.
You can go on the Stuff you Should Know dot
com follow our social links there. I believe they're still there,
(48:01):
uh and you can send us an email to Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Oh Boys, can be a long year. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know.
(00:24):
May be long year, that the year is always the
same length. I almost forgot the word podcast in the intro.
That's an indicator it's gonna be a long year. We're
only going to do subjectively. We're only going to do
this a hundred more times. Yeah, but we just did
one and three, so a hundred more d one more.
I think we do a hundred and four a year,
(00:44):
do we? Jerry? Yeah, because it's fifty two weeks times two.
That's what I meant, So we've done one. I was
just joking by hundred two more. Look bored, That's what
I'm saying, Long year, buddy. Jerry's got on her principal shoes.
She does. Josh just made Jerry walk up and down
(01:05):
the hall so I could hear the clip clop of
her of a wooden heel, and it definitely made me
like I had a little PTSD of like, oh boy,
someone's coming after us. It sounded like the principal was
coming and we were in the office. We were smoking
in the boys room, which I never did. I never
did either, man, even when I was a high school smoker,
(01:25):
I was like, are you out of your mind? Smoking
the lobby in the I'd like escape, you know, campus
the smoke or whatever. Was there a smoking section at
your now, I wasn't that. What am I like your age?
I don't think there was by the time I got
there either, but I definitely remember maybe the first year
or so. But I definitely remember when my sister was
(01:48):
at my high school, she's six years older, there was
a smoking area by the dumpster and like that's where
they had a roped off her students could go smoke,
and they're crazy, it's awesome. They're like, hey, we know
it's a long day. If you need to go, if
you need to go light up, just do it over here.
That's the official place. Yeah, you need to go cool
it up cools, yeah, or go feel alive with pleasure
(02:13):
this newport. Yeah. I think so. I did smoke on
a plane a couple of times. I was on one
flight that I remember that had smoking, an international flight,
and it was like, it's crazy. Yeah, there's no barrier,
no partition, no nothing. It's just these are the roads
that you consider in and smoke, which is all based
the whole plane is a smoking section. Yeah, point, it
(02:35):
is crazy. It's always funny when I see movies where
people are smoking on busses and planes and restaurants, and
it's really different time, different day, different era. Speaking of
a different time, I guess it qualifies as a different time. Um,
I think today, Chuck, that we should talk about in
(02:57):
the era when people went postal trite and I'm looking
at something up relevant. By the way, I'm not just
checking my email right now. Well, I'll tap dance for us. Then. Well,
I was just curious if there was a band called
Going Postal, not if, but how many there were. And
I just typed in going Postal band, and uh, I
(03:18):
see quite a few Facebook pages called going Postal band,
Twitter accounts going postals, some with an end with a
little apostrophe going postal. Those are the little more loosey goosey,
like Jimmy Buffett style, like yacht rocky. Yeah so yeah,
of course people would take something horrific like workplace shootings
(03:40):
and turn it into a band name. Dude, not only
a band name. There's a franchise of male centers like
where you get your mail sent to called going postal
or got really nationwide franchise. Interesting, any article that you
read about the post office, it will be called like
going postal. Like it's completely been co opted and removed
(04:02):
from his context, so much so that I would guess
our younger listeners aren't fully aware of where that whole
thing comes from. Yeah, And I think not that it's
cool and acceptable, but I think the reason it's even
allowed to happen to name things this now is because
we are now in an era where that term uh
(04:23):
as we'll learn in this podcast, and we've talked about
the golden age of skyjacking and the golden age of
this and that there was a weird golden age of
postal workers shooting up their workplaces and it hasn't happened
that much since then. And so that's what I think
has allowed people to be like, hey, good band name. Huh.
(04:44):
So I think because no one would call a band
school shooter now, you know, because that's the active horrific
thing going on. But it's the same thing. And you
could make a really good argument or case that it
grew out of the shooting. These were the first workplace
mass shootings that America is exposed to. And I would
(05:05):
put to you not that people don't shoot up post
offices any longer, but that when it does happen, it
is no longer even remotely as newsworthy as it once was,
because at the beginning, we didn't understand what the heck
was going on. Now we understand firsthand, all of us,
anybody who has a job in America now understands what's
(05:26):
going on. And it's also spread from beyond the post
office into offices around the country, businesses around the country,
and even into schools. Some people, yeah, some people make
the argument that neoliberalism is to blame, and I'm okay
with that, and that will explore that more later. Yeah, liberalists,
(05:49):
did you like I'm trying new things in the two
thousand twenty? Uh? Did you practice your delivery or all? Right? Well,
but I nailed it. I think I think so too.
I know that podcast on is looming on neoliberalism. It's
long been on your list, So just a matter of
getting around to it. I don't know how, maybe how
(06:12):
about five years from now? Alright? Within the next five years,
let's say that if we are still blessed enough to
be doing this job. You keep saying that because apparently
every time you do ten years passes and everybody's like,
aren't can you believe that you even said that? So
I just keep saying that because I want to keep
doing this. I think it's gonna neat to think about,
like having a twenty plus year partnership. Like there might
(06:36):
be a podcasting Hall of Fame one day we can
go visit it exactly, look at Mark Marin and uh,
Karen and Georgia. Maybe they'll give us a senior discount.
All right, So we should talk about and did you
write this one? Actually no, Dave Rouse did. Oh man,
he did a great job. And the way he put
together the story I think works. Well, we're gonna follow
(06:58):
this format. Why not? Uh, if it ain't broke, don't
fix it. That's right, that's my mom tra And how
long are you going to do that? It's like January,
gonna do it all this month? So he starts off
with a story of a man named Patrick Henry Cheryl,
forty four year old man in Oklahoma City. His known
in his neighborhood as crazy pat. He was a big dude.
(07:22):
He was a loner um. He had a lot of
He ticked a lot of boxes when it comes to
mass shootings. He was basically like Pile from full mental
jacket when he was in Yeah, it sounds like, yeah.
He was a loner um. He had been caught as
a peeping tom um. He hurt animals. He would tie
cats and dogs defenses with baling wire. Not nice at all.
(07:46):
He was shy, he was awkward, didn't have a lot
of friends. He joined the Marine Corps, which is where
he learned how to shoot que private Pile once again.
And then after the Marines, he moved on with his
mom and when she died in he was alone with
his Ham radio. I don't want to throw any shade
at Ham Radio, at the Hams out there, because remember
(08:08):
we found out in our episode on Ham radios that
like they are the most courteous, that's right, like civic
minded people around. So this is a bad apple, right right.
He doesn't exemplify the Ham radio community. And I didn't
even want to mention that, but the idea of him
alone with his Ham radio bears mentioning it. You can't
obfuscate the truth. He's got to bring it out, address it,
(08:29):
and then you know, keep going. That's the man. In
eighty four he enlisted in the National Guard of Oklahoma. Uh.
And in he started work, as you know what, a
postal carrier in Edmund, Oklahoma. Right. So, he Um, by
(08:50):
all accounts, was a I don't know if disturbed is
the right word, but maybe it is. Certainly it's a
less balanced individual than than probably the average person for sure. Um.
So when he was told that he Um was going
to be fired if he didn't shape up, he wasn't
(09:11):
super great at his job now, he wasn't according to
his supervisors. He would deliver mail the wrong address. Um,
he would be late to work a lot, and he
was given a notice like you're gonna be fired if
you don't, if you don't start doing what we want
you to. Uh. The next day he showed up to
(09:32):
work and without saying a word. This is what makes
this one so creepy, he went to his supervisor, he
went to find the postmaster and he shot them without
saying a word. And he started moving around his workplace
at this Edmund, Oklahoma post office, and within fifteen minutes
had killed fifteen people, including himself. Yeah. Um. Side note
(09:56):
one of those people was the grandson of Notre Dame
football coach New Rockney. Um. People were locking themselves in vaults. Uh,
they survived, so he didn't kill everyone in the office,
which you might be asking, why is the post office
have a vault stamps? Yeah, they really care about those stamps.
They do valuable. They are people hiding in offices and
(10:19):
under their desks, and by the time the swat team
gets there, they find him dead at his desk. He
went to his desk and killed himself. Right, So fifteen minutes,
killed fifteen people, including himself, and did it without saying
a word. From what all people are saying. Yeah, and
this was, um, one of the bloodiest events in American
(10:43):
history mass shootings at the time. Um, there were a
couple before this, but this was pretty early on in
mass shootings. Um. Yeah, America had not really been fully
acquainted with mass shooting. Kid. They were so rare, so
rare that they were huge, huge, huge stories. And they
also seemed like total anomalies, not the very beginnings of
(11:05):
a pattern that was starting to emerge. That's not what
people thought of these things at the time. They you couldn't.
If you go back and like watch Dan Rather reporting
on this, he can't make heads or tails of it.
It's just the most senseless thing. That's what they use. Senseless, nonsensical, insensible,
like they just couldn't understand it. Yeah. The one um,
of course, the famous sixties six clock tower sniper and
(11:29):
at the University of Texas. Have you ever seen that
documentary on that. It's done in like the animation, through
the animation software like in Waking Life, and somehow it
makes it even more disturbing. I have not seen that,
but I'm gonna see it because this stuff fascinates me.
UMO one, I don't know if we should ever cover
that one. The one that mcdonald'son California was just horrific.
(11:53):
That and the difference between that one and most of
these take place over it always seems like it's like
six minutes, ten minutes, twelve minuts. The one at the
McDonald's was seventy seven minutes of just bloodshed and shooting.
It was awful, It was so uh, but they were
still anomalies. They were anomalies. And this was the first
(12:13):
one that took place in an office. The New York
Daily News said, Cheryl put a new wrinkle to this
kind of violence. He brought it into the office, right,
So he was not the first postal carrier to come
to his workplace and shoot up the place, right. Um,
he he targeted like the back office. But there there
(12:34):
have been a couple before I saw, even going back
into the seventies, where postal workers had come to work
and shot the place up, usually targeting a supervisor. Yeah,
and it's it was never this many people, I think
was one of the big differences. That's a huge difference. Yeah.
The one in South Carolina, three I think, was just
one person um killed with the twelve gauge. The postbaster
(12:57):
barricaded himself in a storage room I ronically of a
convenience store. You'll see why later. So just put a
pin in that, but was actually killed in the convenience
store across the street. Yeah, and actually it wasn't just him.
There were other people barricaded in that convenience store storage
room with him, but he was the only one he shot.
And that's a pattern that started to emerge. The more
(13:18):
people started looking into these things, the more they were
like a lot of these are They're not random. These
guys let people live that they could have easily killed,
and they went out of their way to find people
who they did kill or tried to kill. And a
lot of times it would be their supervisor or the postmaster,
somebody who was in charge of bossing them around, or
(13:39):
possibly a co worker who had you know, um, gotten
a promotion instead of them. Yeah, that happened specifically in
one case, and another guy was stalking a co worker
and he came to work, UM, and I think he
didn't end up killing her, Is that right? No, he
killed killed a male employee instead. So by the time
(14:00):
this Edmunds, Oklahoma, a lot of people will point to
that is like, that's not the first postal shooting. This
is the one that really started to catch everybody's attention. Yeah,
from eighty six to ninety nine, there were fifteen different
incidences or incidents, But you were right by the way,
I know, but it's just a mouthful. Um. That involved
(14:23):
current or former postal workers killing coworkers thirty four people
over a thirteen year period, which included that fourteen in Oklahoma. Yeah,
a lot of people point to is the peak of
the going postal era, not even necessarily because of all
the bloodshed that year, I mean there were some in
(14:44):
ninety three, but more just the way that it leached
into the cultural consciousness by that time, I think was
when it first appeared in print. To write. Ninety three
was when it appeared in print in the St. Petersburg,
Florida Times. And ironically, they were talking about a symposium
on workplace violence that was sponsored by the United States
(15:06):
Postal Service, and the article says, um which has seen
the US Postal Service has seen so many outbursts that
in some circles, excessive stress is known as going postal.
This is that same year Seinfeld debuted I think they
debuted Newman as a character, and they basically said he's
(15:27):
a postal worker and referenced postal workers going crazy. Sure, um,
who would you who would you like to be? I'll
be Newman? Okay, who are you? I gotta be George? Then,
I mean you had to tell the people that's what
I mean. Oh, I see, I thought you were presenting
me with a fake choice. Now let me this is George.
(15:50):
Let me ask you something. What do you do for
a living? Newman? That's my George? I mean United States
postal worker. Aren't those of the guys that always go crazy.
He come back with a gun and shoot everybody sometimes
remember that scene, so do I went and looked at it.
There's actually more to it. Did. They ask him why,
(16:11):
and Numan actually explains it, and there's actually a lot
of water to his explanation. It will turn out, he says,
the mail never stops. Mail never stops, right, it's always coming.
It's always and then it's publisher's clearing house weak or
something like that. He's like it never. They have to
like snap him out of like this tirade that he
goes on. But it's it's actually supposedly part of what
(16:32):
was responsible for this phenomenon, the ceaseless pressure to constantly
move the mail as fast as possible. I've been watching
Seinfeld a lot lately. Yeah, yeah, what do you think?
It's great? It holds up pretty well, holds up pretty well. Yeah,
it's it's and it's funny to hear Larry David um
because this was before I knew. I knew he created Seinfeld,
(16:53):
but before Curbs, so I didn't know what he looked
like or sounded like. And he's his voice a lot
like he's a voice of Steinbren and there's a couple
of other things, like they'll just be a random off
screen line and it's Larry David and now watching it,
it just cracks me up. It's but yeah, it holds
it pretty well. Obviously, it's some of it. We're in
different times now. Some of it's kind of like untoward
(17:15):
but not too bad. Okay, I'll just say that, Yeah,
it was. It was the nineties. No, I know, it's
a different era, different era, and that was even the
emergence of the PC era. But compared to today, it's
it's like like you can't see that kind of stuff. Um,
should we take a break or you got I got
(17:35):
one more cultural reference. There was a um, there was
a Simpsons and I don't know what year it came out,
but I'll bet it was around where, um, Flanders and
Homer become like best friends because Flanders takes Homer to
a football game and Flanders learns that he can't stand Homer.
It doesn't like to be around him, and he has
a dream where where he climbs a clock tower with
(17:58):
a gun and starts shooting at Everybody's like, there's Homer,
there's another Homer. There's Homer, and one of the people
he shoots at is a postal carrier who drops his
mail bag and produces like an assault rifle and starts
shooting back. And it's just the most casual thing that
requires zero explanation whatsoever, because by this time everyone knew
going postal mail carriers. They're not just like some friendly
(18:21):
guy who you know, gets you know, chased off by
a dog every once in a while is the worst
thing that happens. This guy is like on the verge
of cracking and killing everybody, and he comes to my
house every day, like what is going on? And this
is when that kind of started to really rise to
the surface, that that question. Yeah, and like you hinted at,
I'm glad you picked this because it's there. Uh. As
(18:42):
it turns out there is something to it. It wasn't
just coincidence. And we'll talk a little bit more about
that in other cases spread after this. All right, So,
(19:11):
like we said, most of these killings occurred roughly over
eighty six to about ninety seven UM, but they date
back to eighty three and as late as two thousand
six UM. One of another big famous one was Thomas McIlvaine.
He was in Michigan. Yeah, Royal Loac, Michigan, just above Detroit. Yeah.
(19:34):
This guy was martial arts enthusiast and he was in
the Marine Corps as well, and he was discharged dishonorably
for running over a car with a tank. Okay, so
I was watching I read that as cat by the way.
The first like three times I read this running over
a cat with the tad, I was like, oh my god,
but it was a carcharged him not as bad unless
(19:57):
there was a cat in the car to he was driving. Yeah,
tuneses knew about going postal. Um. So there's a documentary
out there called Murdered by Proxy How America Went postal,
And they go to great lengths to to basically say
Thomas McIlvaine was not totally off his rocker, like he
(20:21):
was considered by his coworkers. Still today, people who were
there when he came and shot up the place, victims
of his shooting. Still some of them will say, I
don't condone what he did, but I totally understand it.
And when he was yes, because he was treated so
poorly by the management and so aggressively poorly and hostily
(20:45):
that that they basically said like this was just a
powder kig waiting to happen. And when they heard that
this was going on, they didn't know who it was not.
They said, like, we didn't just think I was Tom
Tom McIlvaine. They said, it could have been any one
of us because this this, this, this was so toxic there. So, yes,
it's easy to characterize him as a wing nut because
(21:07):
he shot up his post office and killed a bunch
of people. But there are other people who were there
who say, that's that's that's not a full picture of
of who he was. Yeah. I mean if there's a
situation where there is a um, a workplace shooting and
a hundred percent of the people don't go, oh, well
it was this guy, uh, then it might bear looking
(21:30):
into the to the workplace environment. Again not condoning in
any way, but it's like he it's just interesting to
think about and once we see the reports that came
out later, like I said, there are some weight to
some of this stuff. UM ninety three, I mean mclevaine,
I guess we should say, um in six minutes, killed
four people, wounded for others, killed himself. He let off
(21:53):
a hundred rounds of shells in six minutes. That's I
can't imagine what that must have been. Like. Dude, that
my Donald's guy had an oozy I know, I I
there are very few people that I hate, but I
hate that man. I hate him. Yea, it was. He
was a despicable human being. Yeah. So ninety three was
(22:14):
and I remember this actually, Um, there were two post
office shootings on the same day. I remember I was
in college at the time, and it was in the
middle of the going postal era, all the headlines and
I remember two of them happened on the same day,
and it was almost I mean, it was horrific, but
it was almost like this weird, like you gotta be
(22:34):
kidding me. Yeah, exactly. Um, And you know this was
back pre widespread internet even, and it was still like
a big deal on campus, everyone talking about. Yeah. I
can imagine, um, because I think it confirmed this general
suspicion that had been confirmed officially that there's something going
(22:55):
on and there's something to this going postal thing. Yeah.
And one of them was not a mail carrier, and
one of them was a mechanic, right, and another that
was passed over for a promotion killed two people wounded
two others. His name is Larry Jason, and this is
the one who killed the woman who got his job. No,
he was he went after the woman. Oh no, no, no,
(23:15):
you're right. I'm sorry. I think he wounded her. I
don't know if he killed her. Oh yeah, I wounded
two people, Yeah, including supervisor and the woman. He killed
two people and then wounded two others. And then the
other guy was Mark Hillburn in California. He killed his
mother and her home before going to the post office.
And he's the one that was looking for a woman
(23:36):
that he was stalking. She wasn't there, so he killed
someone else, right, he was. That's actually kind of an
atypical case that you could you could make a case
doesn't necessarily qualify going postal because he wasn't disgruntled by
being mistreated or whatever. Right, it was a stalking thing,
which is bad enough. Workplace homicide involving stalking is horrible. Yeah,
(23:58):
as far as going postal, look, it probably doesn't actually qualify. Yeah.
And then two thousand six, it was a pretty interesting one.
Um because mass shootings very rarely are at the hands
of a woman. But Jennifer San Marcos in Goalita California,
which is just outside Santa Barbara. Um, and this was
(24:19):
in two thousand and six. She killed how many people here? Six?
I believe she killed six coworkers, and notably, all six
of them were people of color. Yeah, this is in
two thousand six. She was a very disturbed individual, had
put out a lot of signs to her employers, including
having to be carted away literally in a male cart
(24:42):
in handcuffs from the postal sorting facilities. She worked at
UM and committed for seventy two hours again involuntarily. UM.
And she came back years later and killed six people
on a rampage. She was known to be extraordinarily racist
and just about just like racist stuff and mentally ill
(25:03):
to write to herself. Um. So yeah, she she basically
raised a lot of red flags, and I guess they
let her go and then she surprised everybody by coming
back years later. Yeah. And side note, Um, she applied
for her permit at one point in her life to
publish a newspaper called The Racist Times, and I guess
they were like na, Well, she applied for a business
(25:25):
license to to to start a company to publish that. Yes, yeah,
and I guess was rightfully denied. Yeah, I guess I
don't know. Can you can you as a local government
say like free speech? Yeah, I would think so, especially
to local governments, but maybe she just didn't have especially
in two thousand five. Yeah, who knows. Yeh. By the way,
(25:47):
I'm gonna apply. One of my goals is to be
a notary. Oh really, I heard Nick Thune became one.
Oh really, Yeah, that's a very he said. Everything I
read in two thousand and twenties, going to get a
receipt sign means newspapers, magazines, receipts. So I guess he's
gonna be he's gonna notarize everything. Yeah. I got something
notarized the other day. And then I don't think you
(26:08):
can notorize your own stuff or can. It seems unethical. Yeah.
So it's not like I want to do it, because
first of all, I don't need notaries that much. It's
not like to save time. But I just thought, what
an interesting, weird, kind of fun thing, you know, Chuck Bryant, podcaster,
notary public. I think you should get that like wrapped
around your minivan. Yeah, you know, I'd have to get
(26:30):
a mini. Step one is getting a minivan. This is
your list for get a minivan, become a notary, get
a rap saying as much on your minivan. Have you
seen that suv here on the parking deck, the Kim
Brothers karate that's wrapped. That's great because the whole side
of it is this guy getting a stomach kick and
(26:50):
he's just like in silhouette photo. Now it's a full
on photo. Very it was like the size of the
whole backseat door and advertise and Kim Brothers kind of
te it's very, very awesome. It worked for him. It's
pretty good. The rap worked. They're like, that was well spent.
And by the way, I wouldn't charge for my notary
services either. That's the whole It's not like to make extra.
(27:12):
It's not a side hustle, okay. But the thing is
is like people don't value stuff that they get for free.
My notary did it for free. She even came into
work early to do it. And I was like what, oh,
she said nothing. I went no seriously, and she said,
I'm running for judge. She handed me a thing she said,
just vote for me. Okay, So that's not freek Like,
that's illegal, that's quid pro quo quid pro quo? Oh,
(27:36):
you don't even know what that means? Just kidding, Yeah,
it's Spanish. Right. Um. My daughter was watching she Frozen
in Spanish the other day and I went to change it.
She went, no, I want to leave it in Spanish.
She said, s A P, s A P. And then
she came out going. I was like, what are you doing?
(27:58):
She said, I'm speaking Spanish? So what she speaking Spanish
and you just didn't understand or was it gibberish? It
was gibberish, But I said, you know who speaks Spanish,
said Jerry's daughter. She went really, I said, yeah, And
so is she gonna learn Spanish now to speak to
Jerry's At some point? She's she's going to I don't
know when, but I'm gonna get her going. You know
what I want to do. I want to go on
(28:19):
some like archaeological trip to the Middle East and then
we'll overhear some scholars speaking Aramaic and you'll realize that
that's what I was saying. After she watched Frozen two,
just like in in uh in Um, what was this
the movie? And not only is it Aramaic, but it's
like the location of Jimmy Hoffa's body, or right now
the Aramaic or like the Holy Grail, what was the
(28:42):
the Exorcist? Oh sure, yeah yeah, or she'sn't maybe yeah,
like some ancient tongue, should we take a break, had
taken a break like seven minutes ago? All right, we're
gonna take a break, and we're gonna go. Uh. It's
actually a good spot because we're gonna talk about whether
not there was something to going postal credit to this.
(29:23):
Let's get serious again, because you would think that after
these sort of a series of shootings over a period
of about a decade, even though that final one was
in two thousand six, it was a bit of an
outlier that there would be big investigations into what's going
on at the US Postal Service and did that happen?
There was, but it was ill conceived. Yeah, let's talk
(29:46):
about it. Okay. So by this time, when people are saying,
like going postal it's a thing. Your postal carrier is
gonna snap and shoot up your whole family or whatever,
the Postal Service realizes it has a pr problem on
its hands exactly. So they hire a warmer Secretary of
Health and Human Services named Joseph California, Joseph Califano Jr.
(30:07):
And he leads a commission. He chairs a commission to
look into this going postal thing and to the great
relief and four million dollars payment that of the Postal Service.
You mean the U S taxpayer, right, yes, Um, Califano
and his his UM group come back and say going
postal is a myth. Yeah. And this was after a
(30:30):
report by the General Accounting Office that did their own
investigation and report. Uh. They actually issued six reports on
poor labor management relations. That's just the g A oh alone. Yeah,
the toxic work environment there. Um. And so the US
Postal Service, via our money, like you said, threw down
four million bucks to try and clean that report up, right,
(30:52):
And and so the Califano report is what it's called.
It was pretty clever, and it's in its goals and execution, Yeah,
for sure. Basically said we're gonna look at the CDC
stats about workplace deaths and workplace homicides in particular, and
we're gonna just compare stuff statistically. And they did, and
they found that not only is it not particularly dangerous
(31:16):
to work at the post office, but that some other
professions like, um, working as a convenience store clerk, that
was the irony that I said to put a pin in.
Or working as a taxi driver is far, far riskier
as far as your chances of being killed in a
homicide go a hundred and fifty times likely. Or if
(31:37):
you're a taxi driver, then a postal worker eight times
as much if you're a retail worker. And basically most
of those are convenience store clerks, like killed during a robbery, yeah, exactly,
or watch a postal postmaster get killed in your supply rooms. Right,
either way, not a good day at work. I wonder
which one that qualified for for the CDC because it
(31:59):
was in a convenient but it was a postal service employee.
I think it would be reflexive, meaning it would be
could have to be at your workplace. I think it
would qualify. Has having been a both maybe at that
point I think the s he's like, fine, both, this
is just too convoluted. Yeah. I picture like a meeting
(32:19):
with a bunch of people sitting around smoking cigarettes, kind
of debating this one, and then one guy just sticking
a big bite of a club sandwich is saying, just
throw it in both, right, They're like, this is after
the new Gingrich Bob bar era, So we're not even
allowed to use the word gun in the report. We
have to just say homicide by bang bang bang bang. Um.
(32:40):
So the California Fano report comes out, and again it's
at the very least pretty convenient reading of statistics by
the Postal Service. It is, and they basically said they
had a press release, they held like all sorts of interviews,
and they had California was respected, you know, like government servant.
Public servant come out and say no, not only is
(33:02):
this a bad rap for the post office going postals
a myth? And to work at the post office, why
you couldn't find a safer place to work in the
United States. CDC statistics bear it out here. It is
in black and white. And the press aid it up
because the idea that America and American culture was wrong,
that our intuition had gotten it wrong, and that actually
it turns out that the whole thing is a myth.
(33:24):
You and I would eat that up normally, but we
get the even greater pleasure of saying that the Califano
report was a myth and that that's where a lot
of people's reporting stops even today if you look up
going postal and the idea of working at the post
office being dangerous, some reporting stops right there. That the
Califano report proved that it was a myth, and it
(33:46):
turns out that other people came along and said, this
Califano report is way off, and here's the truth. Going
Postals actually quite real. It's just that the Califano Commission
went at it from the wrong direction. Well kind of
purpose flee, yeah, not kind of purposely, very much purpose
for four million dollars purposefully. Yeah. Notably the one man
named Stephen uh Misasako. He's a I don't even know
(34:10):
what accident that wasn't been off a couple of weeks.
You can tell he is a thirty four year veteran,
or was at the time of the USPS worked, it
says here nearly every capacity. I think. He had a
lot of jobs at the Postal Service, and he wrote
a book called Beyond Going Postal, Chuck. We should also
say that his one of those jobs is very important.
(34:31):
He was a workplace improvement analyst, and one of the
things that he was responsible for doing was figuring out
what caused workplace violence at the post office. So he
wasn't just like, you know, just some guy who had
some ideas. Like this guy had learned firsthand what was
really going at the post office, and he saw this
Califano report as a whitewash. Yeah, I mean, he he said,
(34:53):
And he used their own statistics, but he also used
his own you know, personal experience u uh, anecdotal from
his own point of view, and the research he did
as that workplace improvement analyst, and he was like, you know, um,
let's look at the stats. The National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health, part of the CDC, said that of
(35:16):
worker on worker homicides in the eighties were postal employees,
even though they account for three quarters of one percent
of the civilian workforce. So three quarters of a percent
of the workforce is responsible for thirteen percent of the
worker on worker workplace homicides. Yeah, and I think he
was the I don't know about the first but one
(35:36):
of the major voices that was saying, Okay, so you
might get killed more often as a taxi driver, but
not by another taxi driver, right, And the very definition
of going postal, it's not Mary lou hinter walking in
and shooting Judd Hirsch in the taxi bay. That would
be going postal exactly, or going taxi. Sure, well, it's
(35:58):
still be going postal. I guess it applied everywhere, but
it means a worker on worker, usually homicide, almost always
in the workplace, usually related to work. I can't believe
that it took someone to write a book to point
this out and why everyone was going to wait a minute,
A convenience store employee getting robbed and killed is not
(36:19):
the same as going in there and shooting up your office. Yeah,
I know, it's kind of bizarre. I'll bet the alternative
press was all over it. But it took this time
to come along and write this book and be like, hey, hey,
let me spell it out for you. So that was
one thing was he just basically said, hey, like, yes,
going postal is real, and here's the stats that prove it. Yeah,
and here's why. Yeah, that was basically it's a pretty
(36:42):
toxic environment. They did a certain the Califano report itself
did a survey of twenty postal employees on their culture
and compare that to national averages and other professions. And
this is stuff, like I said, it's in the Califano Report.
That said, uh, postal workers scored way way lower than
the national average and all seven areas of positive attitude
(37:05):
towards management, yeah, including it was a big sticking point,
including like do you agree with the statement I am
confident in the fairness and honesty of management? They're like, no, no,
not really. Do you feel like you have autonomy at work?
That was a big one. No, but everyone, not nobody.
But they scored thirty nine favorable rating compared to the
national average of seventy seven, so basically half as much.
(37:28):
YEP said that they felt that they had autonomy or
any kind of um ability to direct their own work
or self. Yeah, and it's I wonder why, but it
seems like the Postal Service, more than other jobs, had
a culture and it seems like they've tried to correct it.
But um so, I can't speak to like the current status,
(37:50):
but when I worked there in the eighties, it seems
like it had this weird culture of management being militaristic
and talking down and dressing down employees in front of
other employees. Yeah, so that was it, I mean, plain
and simple, like, that was the style. It was a
kind of I saw it described as a paramilitary style.
And one of the big through lines that I think
(38:12):
made a lot of postal workers and probably still do,
but definitely did in the eighties and nineties feel helpless, powerless,
and pushed to the brink was that they were um.
They were subservient to their supervisors, who whose direct orders
they had to follow. So imagine if imagine first, Jerry's
(38:33):
our boss. Okay, step two. Imagine if if we said
what we're gonna do an episode ongoing postal and Jerry said,
I order you not to do that. I don't want
you guys talking about that. You can't do it well.
And you gotta add you're not doing two podcasts week now,
you're gonna do eight, okay, And and in not listening
(38:53):
to Jerry, we could just lose our jobs just for that.
She could be like, well, that's it. You didn't listen,
You're fired. That It was the culture, that was the structure,
and I think still is at the post office. You
had to follow a direct order from your supervisor, just
like in the military. You had a choice. You either
listened or you lost your job. That was a big one. Okay.
(39:14):
So that's kind of like this mindset of how you
are coming into work every day and you're getting this
every day, multiple times a day from this person. How
do you not start to kind of hate this person
who keeps pushing you and pushing you. Yeah, and they
were understaffed and overworked. That was a big one, working
like sometimes up to eighty hours a week with Nixon
had charged them with being profitable. Yeah, that's where a
(39:34):
big turn happened. That's where neoliberalism comes in. Is this
idea that um so Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act
of nineteen seventy one and said, by three postal service
needs to turn a profit. It's no longer going to
be receiving texpayer funding. It needs to make its own money.
And we're gonna open up competition from private industry, which
(39:56):
is where FedEx and ups came from. So it went
from being a pretty cushy government job where you know,
you're you had a pension, and you know you were
taking care of you at a union all this stuff,
to all of a sudden, you're like pitted in competition
with like private industry, and now like you can be
fired at the drop of the hat um and you
(40:19):
have no protections any longer. It happened overnight, and a
lot of people point to this as the postal service
being among the first industry in the United States economy
that was neoliberalized, that where competition, deregulation, all this stuff
happened as like a model at the postal service first,
(40:39):
and then it started to spread into the rest of
industry the rest of the economy to where now it's
just commonplace, it's just capitalism. You don't even call it
neo liberal liberalism anymore, and it's just normal to us.
It's just you know, dog eat dog workplace where you know,
if your employer tosses you a few cents for you know,
your four oh one K, you're super grateful. That is
(41:00):
not what it was like before. And the postal service
was the first group to kind of undergo this transformation.
And so some people say, well, they're the first ones
who had workplace shootings, And if you follow it, the
workplace shooting started to get more and more prevalent as
more and more of the economy was liberalized, um so
much so that in the eighties, workplace shootings tripled by
(41:21):
the by the end of the decade, And they say, well,
it was because of this neoliberal um revolution that came
in and just upended that safety net to where if
you didn't produce produced produce, you could be tossed out
on the street and nobody be held accountable for that.
Some people, some people don't handle that very well, and
(41:42):
they can snap and come in and shoot up their workplace.
And that's what some people, UM explain the going postal
as right. And you combine that with UH incidents of
mental illness and the gun culture in this country, and
this is where we are. UM. Another thing that was
going on at the post office was or the postal service,
(42:02):
was that there was not much of a There was
no way to if you had an issue, to really
fix it. UM. Their grievance process was just ridiculous. UM.
As of April two thousand and this is when the
Californa report was released. UM, you would have to go
to an art. You could file a grievance and go
to an art and they would provide arbitration. But as
(42:23):
of April two thousand, there were a hundred and twenty
six thousand grievances awaiting arbitration, which was one grievance for
every seven workers. One out of seven had it filed
an official grievance. And that's not just like I'm unhappy
and I'm complaining to my you know, spouse at home.
There's an official filed grievance. And from what I understand,
to file in official grievance was a big deal because
(42:47):
the um your managers could retaliate against you with impunity
and like harass you out of your job. Basically, yeah,
well it's what we see now and for forever before
this with filing aggrievance on like sexual harassment. It's like
you're you're probably on the way out the door if
that happened. I mean things are changing a little bit now,
(43:07):
oh yeah, yeah, uh so since two thousand six, Um,
this has really dropped off. Um, I think only for
incidents since two thousand thirteen, and two of those or
I'm sorry, three of the four we're at, uh like
a FedEx or ups. But I guess going FedEx isn't
(43:29):
really catchy. Going postal, going postal is and now you
can go postal let your local going postal franchise where
you can pick up your mail. It's amazing and relative security.
It's so bizarre. It is what a weird world in country.
It's what's weird to me is like you you want
(43:49):
this to be wrapped up somehow and it's not. It's
just kind of ongoing. But it's just turned into something else. Yeah,
spread it's weird. Uh, well, if you want them, we're
about going Postal. You can look that up on the
internet see where you come up with um. And we
are aware of the game Postal. I don't know if
(44:10):
we mentioned it or not. We didn't. It's a video game, yea.
How do you how do you get away with making
a game like that? I think they really enjoyed the
shock value of it. You think it got The second
one got banned in New Zealand and Australia. I read interesting. Okay, uh,
I think long ago. It's time for listener man, I'm
(44:32):
gonna call this a safe cracking. We got. We got
a lot of good uh remarks about safe cracking, including
one guy that said we did the best job of
explaining how locks work. And that's I was like, really, yeah,
did you listen to the same episode that we've talked about.
That was high praise. It wasn't praising. Hey, guys, just
listen to the safe cracking. Great work I am co
(44:53):
host of Heist podcast about the famous heist from history
plug Plug. I thought you did a solid inform a
piece on safe cracking. A couple of things here, Chuck
was actually correct. Some safe crackers do use a seed
line torches. For example, the mysterious expert Australian safe cracker
known as Mr X. Wasn't that from Arrested Development? Oh?
(45:16):
Was it? Mr? I watched a few of those the
other night too, Such a great show. Uh. It used
Mr X using a seed line torch to cut a
two inch hole into the safe of Carrie Packer, at
the time, the richest man in Australia, to steal five
and a half million dollars in gold. Uh. Two fun
(45:37):
facts about the history of safe cracking. The Little Joker
was a tool used in the early nineteen hundreds. It's
a tin wheel you could place behind the combination dial
of a safe and when the bank manager would enter
the combination to the vault each day, it would record
the combination be a little notches on the tin required
a robber to break into the bank twice though wants
(45:58):
to plan it and wants to retrieve it. But the
upside is you could pull out the little joker into
the combination and walk right into the vault. But you
double your exposure. Yeah, but that sounds like a pretty
good way to do it if you're going with double
your exposure. By the way, that's safe. I bought it,
came and Emily was like, we really need a different
(46:18):
kind of safe. Really. It's like really, She's like, yeah,
so now I got this stupid heavy box that I'm
not quite sure what to do with him. Maybe I'll
try and sell him in craigslistter something. Do you remember
the combo? Uh? I don't. I haven't said it and
it took and it's it is a key mainly you're
(46:38):
also you can sell it on craigs. Have some weirdos
come over to your house and buy a safe. You
can maybe notorize something for the mother. They make a
podcast out of this. I think this is begging for it.
And then another fun fact. Baron Max Shinburne was a
bank robber and machinists who took a job at the
Lily Safe Company, at the time, the biggest safe company
(46:58):
in the US during the late eighteen hundreds. He worked
there for a year. Not only did he learn everything
about how the safes work. He also snuck little jokers
into saves before they were shipped out. And then uh,
when he quit, he and his crew traveled to the
s and broke into all these safes he had put
the back doors into. They broke into so many Lily
Safes that some say Max and his crew were single
(47:19):
handedly responsible for putting Lily Safe Company out of business. Wow,
he said. All of us at the Heist Podcast are
massive fans, and that is from co host Matt Unsworth. Matt,
thank you so much for that. I think you gave
us so much information. There's no need for anybody to
go listen to the Heist and podcast. No, I want
to check yourself in the foot. Yeah, it sounds like
a pretty great podcast a good heist movie, so maybe
(47:41):
I'll like a good high Spot. I feel like a
good heist movie. You're gonna love a good heist podcast,
I think so. Well. Thank you for writing in for that.
That was pretty great. Um let's see if you want
to get in touch with us to let us know
about your awesome podcast, we want to hear about it.
You can go on the Stuff you Should Know dot
com follow our social links there. I believe they're still there,
(48:01):
uh and you can send us an email to Stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Josh Clark
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