The Postal Service is an equal opportunity employer...

...of nutjobs, apparently.

In a twist on the usual script, the disgruntled ex-postal employee who showed up at work and aired out some grievances (and some former co-workers) was a woman. Odd, as we usually prefer to assassinate someone's character, rather than the actual someone, but California is a thoroughly modern state, after all. When reading the story, I had my predictable, visceral first reaction of "Why didn't somebody just shoot her?" followed by my equally predictable second reaction of "Oh yeah, it was a Post Office. In California. No guns allowed. Except for psychos."

Anyhow, after getting all empowered, she apparently Did The Right Thing in the end and saved the state the cost of a trial, via a self-inflicted gunshot wound. (Note to potential emulators: If you want to kill yourself, please just nip off into the woods quietly and smoke that gun barrel alone. Don't drag all these other people into the scenario with you, okay? And do it in the woods to save us the inevitable carpet cleaning bills. Thanks.)

There's a poll up at the story on AOL, asking if you've "ever feared a co-worker would commit workplace violence". Despite working someplace where everybody packs heat and there are machine guns hanging on the walls, I had to answer "no" to that one. Maybe I'd have had to answer differently if I was a unionized government employee working in a victim disarmament zone...