The seeming epidemic of violence in the workplace struck home today. There was a murder-suicide at the Baltimore office of my wife’s company. The murder victim was a manager who was killed by one of his employees, who then turned the gun on himself. I’m not going to use any names here, so this might get kind of convoluted. I apologize for any confusion. The victim was someone with whom my wife worked closely on a number of projects. In fact, Donna was at the New Jersey office last week, and had meetings in which he participated. She was in the San Diego office yesterday working on some issues with another of his employees who had been sent out to help deal with them. She called him at his office in Baltimore, and got an automated message saying that he would be out of the office until the 16th. Later in the morning, someone called with the news that he had been shot, and his (former?) employee packed hurriedly and rushed home. Donna is quite shaken, as you might imagine.
Update: I’ve added my comment from below:
Those are all worthwhile comments, but not exactly what I’m talking about. The people you describe are certainly part of the problem, but what scares me aren’t the confused, angry, bitter types, but the true sociopaths. I’m not saying that the guy who killed his boss wasn’t one of those types you describe, in fact, he probably was.
The two incidents I described were only connected in a tangential way. The first sort of led me into thinking about the second. The true sociopath has no conscience. Human life means nothing to him. He has no connection to anything outside himself. And he has no connection to himself either, because there’s nothing there. I suppose it may be a case of living in the information age, but it sure seems like there are more of them these days.
I don’t really have anything profound to say about this, although something struck me today while I was at work. I work in retail management for a large department store chain, and I noticed a couple of older teenagers in the mall who looked like they were straight out of The Matrix, or something. One of them was wearing a cowl-like, sort of Druidian hood that came to a point in the back. The front of it was perched right in the middle of his head. And they had the walk. You know the walk. Like James Dean, except that you got the impression that they’d think nothing of killing you just for the hell of it. I thought to myself, they’re not real people. They think they’re in a movie.
I’m afraid that we’ve raised a couple of generations that have way too many sociopaths in them. People who have no connection to morals as they used to be taught, no connection to themselves. No conscience. No conception of other people whose lives are meaningful. I can’t imagine, no matter the situation, no matter the perceived injustice, no matter how desperate I was, killing another human being and then killing myself. In fact, my wife gets pissed at me because I won’t kill spiders. I actually pick them up and put them outside. There, now you know my secret. I’m really just an old softie. But, I digress.
Where was I before I so rudely interrupted myself? I know everyone always thinks everything in their own time is going to hell in a handbasket. I’m sure the sociopaths won’t start outnumbering the rest of us. But sometimes I worry. And I damn sure look behind me.
I work at a DA office
It’s amazing how much I didn’t know before I started this job
’Tis what separates us from the Kostards, Darleen. We freely admit that there are things that we do not know.
Psychopaths are nothing new. I work in a prison filled with 75-year-old and twenty-year-old losers who would each think nothing of hurting someone for some short-term gain. And it’s a medium and minimum yard.
Some of the “nicest” (read: best-behaved) inmates are killers. Killers are professional in their criminality and tend to see their stay as the downside of the risk/reward ratio. The murderers are jackasses who shot someone over a dirty look or some sort of gangland gerrymanding issue. Murderers tend to be very dumb, or at least impulsively unthinking.
It’s always interesting to find out who did what. Drunk drivers tend to remind me of people I knew in high school. Drug violators tend to be flashy idiot peacock types who still talk about the cars and the stuff they had (true for the meth-head Aryan Brother motorcycle/musclecar types as well as the Mexican mafia). The child molesters come from all walks of life, but mostly seem depressed as hell (good). When they talk, they sound like junior high bullies who never grew up.
Anyone can go whacko and kill someone. Most of us don’t. Why? Combine all the sociological psychobabble with armaments and you tend to have a good idea of who might: depressed, oppressed, annoyed, delusional, vengeful, armed and impulsive together in one person is someone to avoid. Then again, maybe they’ll only harm themselves.
But what the hell do I know? I’m just a librarian at a state prison.
It may be related to cultural cohesion more than anything else, CraigC.
In times past we ‘knew’ a little more about each other and ‘knew’ a little better what to do and what not to do. Not to say it was a rock-solid wall against murder-suicides, it just meant less misunderstandings.
There are thoughtless people out there. But you’ve got a problem when otherwise thoughtful people are behaving unthinkingly.
I blame our public schools (I almost typed ‘pubic’
for being ‘great’ but actually sucking wind.
What can ya do, what can ya do.
Used to work in the Wayne County (Detroit) criminal courts.
You really do not want to know.
Yesterday, a young man (early 20s) shot five people in the street in Detroit. Not a drug bust gone wrong- he just shot at random people in the street. I guess he was just having fun. Among the dead, a 58 y/o woman and a disable Marine Veteran.
I think the scarier thing is thinking about how many people out there have impulses like that but don’t act on them. I’m sure there are a lot. Think of the people you’ve met in social and professional setting who seem to have no regard for any sort of common morality or, far worse, haven’t seemed to make the leap from adolescent self-centeredness to adulthood.
Now, by morality I’m not talking dick jokes or drug humor, I’m talking about people who dismiss any type of moral message because the messenger is flawed. You know, the guy who hates his boss because his boss gave him a bad review or made him do something he didn’t want to do. Or the guy that holds a grudge against someone for years because he was blackballed from a fraternity. You know, the guys who look successful and confident but after you talk to them you see just how flawed their self-esteem is.
I’ll give you an example, just because it’s fresh in my mind. Last week I spent two and a half hours in a car with a guy who spent the whole time talking about how he hated working for all the “frat boys and jocks” who didn’t know anything and how he was constantly cleaning up after them, the “business majors who drank their way through college”. Now this guy is in sales, what exactly did he expect? Not only that, but besides the idiot sales guys, all he could talk about was things that he had done in High School. This guy was pushing 50, married and making damn good money. If something happens to tip him, say a divorce or a bad review, what’s to stop him from totally losing it?
I remember feeling the way he did when I was in my 20’s. I think everybody does for a while, you feel smarter than the world, your job sucks and no one can tell you anything and you are angry alll the time, even when you aren’t. It’s the “angry young man” everyone talks about. It’s supposed to be a learning experience. The young lion challenges the old lion, the old lion chomps on the young lion’s balls, the young lion goes and sulks in the corner until he’s old enough and wise enough to win on points instead of the knockout and can get away with totally mixing his metaphors.
I think a lot, and by a lot I mean “a lot” of people nowadays haven’t grown up. I know when i did, and I know for me it was choice, not something that would happen on its own.
LMC: Amen, Hallelujah, etc.
As a 23-yr-old, I can tell you that I battle with the angry young man every day. Fortunately, I’ve got a good Governor, so most of the battles are fruitful.
That being said, (which is a phrase I use way too much) I think that there is a big problem with the not-growing-up relating to our cultural cohesion. The problem? Only adults make a culture stick together, both male and female. Marriages, families, and voluntary (and involuntary) institutions and the strength of them is the strength of the culture. But marriage is the core.
Marriages, uh, actually save energy. I can’t prove it, but its something I’ve been tossing around in my head. Anyone get the idea? I mean, provided they work right. Anyway, I’m sure that will elicit a lot of jokes, especially coming from an unmarried sod such as myself.
“No, go back! Before it’s too late!”
-Some things are inevitable. I could no more avoid death than I could growing old than I could reaching the homebuilding phase in life.
Oh well.
Actually, between hotel rooms, parking garages, quick “business” trips to the Bahamas and the odd Southeast asian sex tour, you may be right about that, since when you get married something called a “duvet” appears on your bed and makes it impossible to sleep when the heat’s on.
LMC,
Entitlement. We teach entitlement. I’m entitled to that toy. I take it. If you don’t give it to me, I bite. If that doesn’t work, I hit. My mother watches and says it’s a developmental stage. Or, when she doesn’t get what she wants she slaps Dad and he gives her a knuckle sandwich in return. Or Dad is gone entirely, leaving me to think I’m the biggest guy around at age five and no one dissuades me of this notion.
No training, no discipline to redirect these energies. The take home message is that the world revolves around me.
Then, when anyone deprives me of something I want, I lash out. Except that when I’m bigger, I use more force.
Diagnosing these social problems isn’t that complicated, solving them not so easy.
Those are all worthwhile comments, but not exactly what I’m talking about. The people you describe are certainly part of the problem, but what scares me aren’t the confused, angry, bitter types, but the true sociopaths. I’m not saying that the guy who killed his boss wasn’t one of those types you describe, in fact, he probably was.
The two incidents I described were only connected in a tangential way. The first sort of led me into thinking about the second. The true sociopath has no conscience. Human life means nothing to him. He has no connection to anything outside himself. And he has no connection to himself either, because there’s nothing there. I suppose it may be a case of living in the information age, but it sure seems like there are more of them these days.
Craig,
I would think (hope?) that here are far fewer true sociopaths out there than people who are so self centered that other human life means nothing. I would think that a person who was so disconnected from himself would be a suicide and not a murderer, just because he’s get nothing out of it. In fact, even your average suicide bomber thinks he’s getting something out of the deal, so maybe our guy would just kinda sit in the tub and rot. I dunno, what do you think.
The scariest guy I ever met was a contractor who I replaced at a previous employer. I was hired full-time because this guy was arrested for murdering a guy with a hunting rifle, tracking him down like an animal, because the guy had allegedly blackballed him from a fraternity years ago. Sitting in the cube next to that guy was my inspiration for getting out of IT.
But I’m not sure that there are more of these types or we just hear about them because of national news. I was watching news from Indianapolis yesterday and during the 6:00 news they spent a good two minutes on possible flooding in the Northeast. That’s the local newscast, who cares if it’s raining in Bucks County?
Christ, slow work day.
– Hey look at the bright side LMC. You, and a multitude of others will NOT be attending the Cruise celeb wedding today. That in itself, aside from being “non road crab dancing day”, makes it all worthwhile….That was just enough to tip things in the direction of not strangling my boss. Everyones a winner…..
If there are more sociopaths, then why has the murder rate decreased?
BTW- teen punks wearing “Druidian hoods” aren’t NECESSARILY not “real people”. They could just be a couple of teenagers seeking attention. Just sayin’, you know.
If there are more sociopaths, then why has the murder rate decreased?
– Even lower standards among defense lawyers?
 The true sociopath has no conscience. Human life means nothing to him. He has no connection to anything outside himself. And he has no connection to himself either, because there’s nothing there.ÂÂ
Only time will tell if the shooter in Detroit fits that description, but randomly shooting people walking, going to work, exercising on a street? Sounds like a sociopath to me.
He shot five. Killed two. No motivation. Target practice?
Who knows? It is beyond my comprehension to do physical harm to myself or others – no matter how pissed I get. It is an inability to cope, as far as I can see. It is control denied.
As much as I love the TV (I always have it on, watching or not), it is probably the worst thing that has happened to the world since the first Papal enclave.
I also don’t agree that all sociopaths are capable of murder. I say: only when they’re drunk.
I happen to think that I am a person of faith, and not a sociopath. I Am Charlotte Simmons, only I am old enough to have thought about where I went for a large part of my life.
And no, I am not a bible thumper, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a Christian (pronounced with a long “i”). The Christian church holds the seed, but not the flower.
Sometimes, seeing the truth can drive people over the edge. It really sucks when you finally figure out that the Sharper Edge is not the be-all and end-all. Know what I mean?
TW: I’ll give it a nine for report, and ten for boquet. Qui coupe le fromage?
Steelhead’s right Craig, dorks are people too.
Bad aim?
BBH,
If I’m not going, what the hell did I make all these crab puffs for?
– Attention WalMat shoppers: Just in time for Christmas. “Murder never waits”, a third generation new offering from ScumWerks gaming.
– Vent endlessly, enjoying the thrill of the kill, on 28 different game play levels. Typical scenarios:
“Kill the bitch”, where you finally will be getting even with that skagg that stopped putting out, and then walked out with your new plasma while you were at work. Exhillerating action packed realism.
“My fucking Boss”, the level that captures unparalleled realism, as you wander through the workplace slaughtering at will, picking up additional ammunition packs with each score. Glorious blood and gore effect’s, at a new level of color and rendition.
“Screw my inlaws”, getting back at those bastards once and for all. Special effects you have to see to believe, from stuffing bodies in garage freezers, to grinding leg bones in a wood chipper.
You’ll never get enough of the blood curdling screams, and nonstop viscereal highs, as you torture, and slash your way through to the ultimate position of prime sociopath.
– Defense lawyers of America rating – 5 stars
– AMA rating – 4 1/2 stars
– Versions for all three major game machines – available Nov. 27th at a store near you.
“…what the hell did I make all these crab puffs for?”
– You were hoping to get lucky this weekend?
“Screw my inlawsâ€Â, getting back at those bastards once and for all. Special effects you have to see to believe, from stuffing bodies in garage freezers, to grinding leg bones in a wood chipper.
This one sounds promising.
Guys, as far as the “teens” (they could have been in their early twenties), I’m 99% sure that they were gangbangers, but you’re right. That doesn’t mean they were sociopaths. They were sort of walking metaphors for that. And really, there’s no effective difference between true sociopaths and guys (and it’s almost always guys) who are so massively self-centered that other humans mean nothing to them.
I was hoping to provoke a discussion, and I think I’ve done that. It’s truly scary to think that you can be at work minding your own business and some dick can walk in and start killing people.
Anyone can go whacko and kill someone. Most of us don’t. Why?
Two words- death penalty