The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence (23 page)

When USAir fired Burke, they failed to take back his airport ID badge, and he wore it on his last day alive. Because of that badge, the woman operating the metal detector waved Burke around it and said, “Have a nice day.” He replied, “I’ll have a very nice day.” He then walked into Thompson’s office and demanded his job back. Thompson said no, then cut the discussion short because he was flying to San Francisco. Soon after, Burke stood in line and bought a ticket for the same flight. Unlike the other passengers taking their seats on Flight 1771 that afternoon, Burke did not care where the plane was scheduled to go, because he already knew where it would end up.

After take-off, he wrote a note on an air-sickness bag: “Hi Ray. I think it’s sort of ironical that we end up like this. I asked for some leniency for my family, remember? And I got none. And you’ll get none.”

At twenty-two thousand feet, the flight crew heard two shots (Burke had just killed Ray Thompson). They immediately radioed air traffic controllers: “There’s gunfire aboard!” Seconds later, the plane’s black box recorded three more shots, then some commotion, then a final shot.

The tower tried to re-contact the pilots, but the jet was no longer under their control. It was now under the firm control of gravity as it made a seven-hundred-miles-per-hour descent into the ground. Forty-three people died instantly, making Burke the perpetrator of the single worst workplace violence tragedy in American history. The worst, but far from the last.

We generally think of these shooting sprees as being committed by employees at large corporations or government agencies, but an increasing number are perpetrated by stalkers, patrons, and even college students. Several of our clients now are major universities. In years past, they would not have had these concerns, but violence finds its way into every institution of our culture, and people not expecting it are also not prepared for it.

Often, the signs are all there, but so is the denial. For example, after some terrible on-campus violence, school officials will describe a perpetrator as having been “a student in good standing.” Such descriptions are meant to say, “Who could have known?” but further inquiry always answers that question.

The case of college student Wayne Lo is an informative example. On the morning of the day he became famous, Wayne received a package at the college. A receptionist was suspicious about its contents (suspicion is a signal of intuition) because of two words on the return address: “Classic Arms.” She correctly notified resident directors, who took the package to a regularly scheduled meeting with the dean, Bernard Rodgers. Staff members wanted to open the package, which they thought might contain a weapon, but Dean Rodgers said it would be improper for the college to interfere with the delivery of a student’s mail. He did agree that a member of the staff could approach Wayne Lo to discuss it.

Wayne was allowed to pick up the package and take it to his room. Soon after, Trinka Robinson, the resident director of his dormitory, came and asked Wayne what was in his heavy little package. He refused to open it. She asked again, and he again refused, so she left. When she returned later with her husband, Floyd, the box had been opened. Wayne told them that it didn’t contain a weapon but rather three empty pistol clips, and some other gun parts. There was also an empty ammunition box. He said he’d ordered some of the items as gifts and intended to use others himself.

Apparently electing to forget that Wayne had refused to open the package in Trinka’s presence, Floyd Robinson was satisfied. He later described Wayne as “very open with me and not at all defensive.” This observation was meant to communicate that same old “Who could have known?” even though by that point several people could have known.

At around nine P.M. that evening, an anonymous male caller told Trinka that Wayne had a gun and was going to kill her, her family, and others.

Trinka took the threat seriously enough to call several school officials. She also immediately took her children to the home of a school provost. Her husband joined them there at around 9:30. They decided they would go and search Wayne’s room. If they found a weapon, or if he resisted, they would call the police. But since Dean Rodgers hadn’t let them open Wayne’s package, how would he react if they searched Wayne’s room? Better call the dean, they decided, and that’s what they were doing when they heard the first shots.

By the time the loud noises stopped, six people had been shot. Two of them were already dead. It had been less than twelve hours since Wayne had picked up the package that stimulated school officials to do everything except the obvious thing: call the police. Even the explicit warning call about Wayne’s intentions hadn’t convinced them to call the police.

It was ten more days before Dean Rodgers made any public explanation, and people were anxious to hear what he knew about the incident. Instead, he told them what he did not know: “I don’t know anything about weapons. I don’t know anything about guns.” I am sure Dean Rodgers knew guns are dangerous, and I am sure he knew there were people he could call about the matter.

Given that so little about Wayne’s feelings and perceptions was known to college officials, it would have been difficult to apply the JACA elements, but this is a perfect example of a case in which context alone is the dominant element of prediction: A student receives a package from a gun manufacturer; he refuses to open it or discuss its contents; he then opens it when he is alone; within hours, an anonymous caller warns that the student has a gun and plans to kill people. These things did not each happen independently; they
all
happened, and one could add another important factor: People felt intuitively that there was hazard.

When Wayne Lo appeared at his arraignment for murder, he wore a sweatshirt with the words
SICK OF IT ALL
across his chest. That speaks my feelings about the many, many cases in which denial was allowed to turn into negligence, and in which people in a position to know were the same ones later asking “Who could have known?”

▪ ▪ ▪

Having told several stories in which the warning signs were ignored and a tragedy occurred, I also want to acknowledge that the people involved—those who visited Edward Taylor to make him leave Jim Hicklin alone, those at Wayne Lo’s school, at Laura Black’s company, at USAir, even at the much-criticized U.S. Postal Service—were doing the best they could with the tools they had at the time. If they’d had the knowledge you now have, I believe they’d have made different choices, and thus, my observations are not about blame, but about education.

Park Dietz, the nation’s leading forensic psychiatrist and an expert on violence, has noted that the case histories are “littered with reports, letters, memoranda, and recollections that show people felt uncomfortable, threatened, intimidated, violated and unsafe because of the very person who later committed atrocious acts of violence.” One case Dietz studied tells a story of denial in its most undeniable form: A man killed one of his co-workers, served his prison time, was released,
and was rehired by the same company whose employee he had murdered
. While at the company the second time, he alienated people because he was always sullen and angry. He made threats that were known to supervisors and he stalked a female co-worker. After he resigned (on the verge of being fired), he continued to stalk the woman and then he killed her.

Who could have known?

▪ ▪ ▪

Destructive acts against co-workers and organizations are not rare or isolated incidents. In an age of takeovers, mergers, and down-sizing, with people frequently laid off or fired, employee emotion is a force to be reckoned with. The loss of a job can be as traumatic as the loss of a loved one, but few fired employees receive a lot of condolence or support.

While the frequency of violent incidents has increased, most of the influencing factors have remained the same for a long while. Many American employers hire the wrong people and don’t bother to find out a thing about them. Then employees are supervised in ways likely to bring out their worst characteristics. Finally, the way they are fired influences events as much as the fact that they were hired. Few people would knowingly light the fuse on a bomb, but many employers inadvertently do exactly that. Many come to me afterwards, but only a few come wanting to learn about the topic before it’s a crisis.

I tell those clients about the most common type of problem employee, the one I call the Scriptwriter. He has several characteristics that are detectable early in his employment. One is his inflexibility; he is not receptive to suggestions because he takes them as affronts or criticisms of his way of doing things. Another characteristic is that he invests others with the worst possible motives and character. Entering a discussion about a discrepancy on his paycheck, for example, he says or thinks, “You’d better not try to screw me out of any money.” It is as if he expects people to slight him or harm him.

The Scriptwriter is the type of person who asks you a question, answers it himself, then walks away angry at what you said. In this regard, he
writes the script
for his interaction with co-workers and management. In his script, he is a reasonable and good worker who must be constantly on guard against the ambushes of co-workers and supervisors. The things that go wrong are never his fault, and even accidental, unintended events are the work of others who will try to blame him. People are out to get him, period. And the company does nothing about it and doesn’t appreciate his contribution.

When you try to manage or reason with such a person, you find that he is not reacting to what you say but rather to what he expects you to say; he is reacting to his script. His is a personality that is self-defeating. The old “jack joke” demonstrates this dynamic at work.

The Scriptwriter gives no credit when people are helpful, and this causes alienation from co-workers. His script actually begins to come true, and people treat him as he expects them to. By the time a given employer encounters him, he has likely been through these problems at other jobs and in other relationships.

The Scriptwriter issues warnings: “You’d better not try to blame me for what happened,” or “I’d better get that promotion.” Even when he gets his way, he believes it’s only because he forced the company to give it to him. He still thinks management was trying to get out of promoting him, but couldn’t.

When I review such an employee’s personnel file, it’s amazing how many serious performance or insubordination incidents are documented. Many are the kinds of things that companies could terminate for. He has made threats, he has bullied, he has intimidated. Sometimes the employee has even performed sabotage or already been violent at work, and yet he wasn’t fired because everybody was afraid to fire him. Managers have generally shifted him around from department to department, or put him on a late shift, or done whatever it takes to make him somebody else’s problem. Nobody wanted to sit down, look him in the eye, and fire him, because they knew he would react badly.

Since this dynamic feeds on itself and gets worse, and because the longer he is there, the more he feels entitled to be there, the key is to get rid of a Scriptwriter early. (I am not going into the quagmire of legally acceptable reasons for termination, but rather addressing those cases in which there is cause to fire someone and the decision to fire has been made.) When you first have cause to terminate this person, it should be done. Be sure, however, that the cause is sufficient and that your determination is unshakable, because if you try to fire him and fail, you are setting the stage for the TIME syndrome, which is the introduction of
t
hreats,
i
ntimidations,
m
anipulations, and
e
scalation.

Manipulations are statements intended to influence outcome without resorting to threat. Escalations are actions intended to cause fear, upset, or anxiety, such as showing up somewhere uninvited, sending something alarming, damaging something, or acting sinister.