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In 1986, 15 employees were killed at the Edmond, Oklahoma, Post Office by postman Patrick Sherrill, who then committed suicide. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed in more than 20 incidents.
Following this series of events, the idiom has entered into common usage, and is applied to murders committed by employees in the worksplace, irrespective of the employer; and occasionally more loosely to describe killings in the workplace other than by employees in situations in which the motive is not commonplace.
There is no consensus as to whether the incidence of workplace murder in the US Postal Service is atypical. Some defense counsels for perpetrators have suggested that a culture of poor or oppressive management leads to mental breakdown and loss of control on the part of employees. On the other hand, in 2000 the USPS released a study which it said refuted the belief that postal employees were particularly prone to this behaviour, concluding instead that workplace violence at USPS was around the average for comparable US workplaces.
Usage: "If the boss keeps giving me a hard time, I'm going to go postal."
Going Postal is a book by Don Lasseter, which examines the issue of workplace shootings inside the USPS (BooksEnthsiast.com).
Going Postal is the 33rd book in the discworldThe Discworld is the creation of Terry Pratchett. It is an imaginary location that appears in most of his books. One of Pratchett's earlier novels, Strata also features a disc-shaped world, but a different one. The Discworld It consists of (as the name su series by Terry PratchettTerence David John Pratchett OBE (known to some fans as Pterry is an English fantasy author (born April 28, 1948, in Beaconsfield, Bucks), best known for his Discworld series. Biography Pratchett's first published work was the short story "The Hades Busin (BooksEnthsiast.com).
PostalPostal is an ultraviolent computer game made by Running With Scissors and published by Ripcord Games. A trademark lawsuit was filed against Running With Scissors by the United States Postal Service, and dismissed six years later. The sequel, Postal 2, is is a controversial computer game (based on this expression) developed by Running With ScissorsRunning With Scissors, Inc. RWS for short) is a british computer game developing company. Their best-known title, Postal, was publicly decried by Senator Joe Lieberman and other critics due to its extreme violence. In April 2003, RWS released a sequel, Po.