Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond Read Online Free PDF Page A

ex post facto : management started listening.
    And Standard Gravure is closed. It no longer exists today. Which is one of the goals of these rage massacres—the perpetrators are attacking the entire company, the workplace as an institution, the corporate culture, at least as much as the individuals whom they shoot. That’s why there are no “random” victims—everyone in the targeted company is guilty by association, or they’re collateral damage. The goal is to destroy the company itself, the source of the pain.
     
    VonderHaar had no doubt that Wesbecker wasn’t merely murdering at random: “I think he was looking for the supervisor. The supervisor’s office was right there and, obviously, the supervisor was the focal point of his unhappiness about the assignment to the folder. And the guess of many of us is that that’s who he intended to get revenge on.” Both the CEO and the supervisor just happened to be out when Joe Wesbecker’s revenge came.
     

4
Just Tough It Out
     
    In a deposition taken a few years after the massacre, Daniel Mattingly, a compliance officer with the Louisville and Jefferson County Human Relations Commission who handled Wesbecker’s job discrimination complaint, gave testimony that reveals what I believe to be the true underlying cause of the massacre: an unprecedented corporate cold-bloodedness that has overtaken America over the past several decades. Here is Mattingly’s account of Wesbecker’s last eighteen months, as he desperately fought against Standard Gravure’s callous and cruel management, exhausting every legal, nonviolent tool he could.
    A. Well, he came in complaining that he was being discriminated against on the job by the company that he worked for. His complaint revolved around his assertion that his supervisors were forcing him to work on a machine at work called the folder, and that when they did not force him to work on that machine they were threatening to make him work on that machine… . [H]e had a statement from the company psychologist saying that he should not be made to work on this folder, which was a stressful machine, unless absolutely necessary. But that even though he had this statement from the psychologist, the company officials were making him work the folder and, more than that, threatening to make him work the folder. […] He was maintaining that the company would make exceptions for people with physical ailments and not make them work the folder, but they would not make an exception for him, who had an emotional problem, and therefore discrimination. And that was his basic argument.
    Q. With regard to his statements on that date, sir, did he give you any names of people at work or discuss any specifics of foremen or supervisors?
    A. Yes. He mentioned that Donald Cox was his general foreman and there were two immediate supervisors, Popham and McKeown. He gave examples. I think he said that Mr. Popham kept insisting that there was really nothing wrong with him and that, “If we need to put you on the folder, we will.” And that Mr. McKeown said things like, “All you need to do is just tough it out and do your job.” You see, he maintained that they were using his handicap against him, because if they threatened him he would go home and worry about that and stew and fret over it. And so it became a problem even when he was away from the job because he was afraid when he went back in they were going to make him do that.
    Q. Did he discuss the work environment at Standard Gravure with you, sir?
    A. Well, he had a theory about what caused his—his problem, and that was related to the work environment at Standard Gravure.
    Q. How so?
     
    A. He told me that for the last fifteen, seventeen years, whatever it is he had worked there, that he had been exposed to a chemical called toluene, and he brought with him copies of pages from a magazine that discussed the effects of being exposed to toluene, and they indicated that extended exposure can