Dark Side: Is Your Job a Dead End?
Is your job potentially dangerous,
and are you vulnerable at the workplace in some as-yet unexamined way? Most of
us spend more time at work than at home or anywhere else. We get to know our
fellow workers, but oftentimes not well enough. Although there are many
variations, mass murder in the workplace usually takes one of five forms:
- a disgruntled employee or former employee
kills or injures other employees,
- an angry spouse or relative stalks employees
at work,
- violence is committed during a criminal act
such as robbery,
- violence is committed against people in dangerous
jobs, such as law enforcement personnel, and
- acts of terrorism or hate crimes are carried
out, such as the terrorist attack
In any case, the deaths of perpetrators of such violence are usually swift, either at their own hands or at the hands of law enforcement officials who kill them to prevent more killings. Very few workplace killers walk away from their killing grounds.
Moreover, as more women gain power
in the workplace, it is likely that the reported sexual harassment of men by women
will increase further. Power corrupts, regardless of gender. But it is the
workplace mass murders that have caught the public eye.
Many people have cause to feel
disgruntled because of changes in the workplace due to automation and bad
economic conditions. Old-style family and community cohesiveness,
no less than employer-employee good
relations and loyalty, have gone by the board, with deleterious effects. The
availability of rapidfire, military-style assault weapons has made it possible
for a disgruntled person with a private arsenal to kill a lot of people.
Family
mass murderers kill four or more family members and mayor may not commit
suicide themselves. When suicide occurs, it is classified as a murder-suicide
There are also spree murderers and serial murderers.
The typical mass murderer is as ordinary as many people’s next door neighbor, a white male in his late twenties to mid-forties. But he is atypical in that he is frequently a loner who drifts from job to job, existing without close family, neighborhood, or community ties. There are thousands of angry men among us who seek revenge for real or imagined grievances. They also make threats of wreaking violence, but thankfully there are only a few who turn their anger into actual outbreaks of violence.
Mass murderers tend to have a
lethal combination of paranoia (feelings of persecution) and depression. They
feel despondent and hopeless while at the same time they blame others for their
plight. Their fantasies tend to be straightforward: revenge against the
perceived persecutors. They do not entertain the intricate, baroque sexual
fantasies of the serial sexual murderer. Nonetheless, they do kill, and, beyond
the actual body count, there are many physical and psychological victims of
workplace violence. No statistics can capture the immense psychological harm
seared into the minds of survivors of this sort of violence.
Many survivors of workplace violence are scarred by symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some for many years afterwards. Terrifying flashbacks that have the clarity of video images, hellish and sweat-drenched nightmares, numbed feelings, and withdrawal from relationships are some of the symptoms that result from life-threatening trauma in the workplace.
Violence against workers has also
been charted by occupation, showing that most of the violence is directed at
people who interact with the public. The top occupations at risk for a range of
physical injuries resulting from violence, as reported by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, are, in descending order, recreational workers, bartenders, cab drivers,
retail sales clerks, food service workers, police officers, parking attendants,
auto mechanics, security guards, social workers, cashiers, bus drivers, fire
fighters, and service station attendants.
Medical facilities such as doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, regular wards, nursing homes, and clinics have become increasingly dangerous places for both practitioners and patients because of people intent on murder in such locations.
Patients in nursing homes are sometimes killed by physical abuse. It is my belief that some serial killers work in facilities that take care of the elderly and the very infirm—killers who change jobs frequently and whose crimes are only discovered in the wake of heightened patient mortality rates that are otherwise inexplicable.
Lawyers are advocates who work within an adversarial system, one that leads directly to the polarization of positions and to the evocation of strong emotions. The courts deal with difficult, contentious, and momentous decisions, sometimes of life and death; stresses on litigants, lawyers, judges, and juries can be extremely high.
Profiling of potential
perpetrators of workplace violence is an inexact exercise; it should be viewed
as a rough assessment tool that can raise the consciousness of management
personnel toward the possible prevention of outbreaks of violence in their workplaces.
Acknowledgements:
Bibliography:
1. Criminal
Investigations – Crime Scene Investigation.2000
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