Photo: Fourteen employees of the post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, were killed in August 1986 when postman Patrick Sherrill “went postal.”
The phrase “going postal,” which means to become uncontrollably angry, appeared as a slang term in American English in the 1990s. It emerged after a spate of shootings at post offices carried out by employees who were angry about their working conditions.
The first recorded use of the term came in 1993, when a Florida newspaper printed an article about the post office murders. By that time, at least 11 such tragedies had occurred — but there were more to come.
These shootings became so commonplace that the United States Postal Service even created a new position, the Workplace Environment Analyst. The workers hired to fill these jobs were tasked with preventing violence and improving workplace conditions, though this was no easy task.