The second definition of “going postal” according to Urban Dictionary is: pulling an uzi, assault rifle or most any other firearm out from under your jacket and going nuts. That is, wasting anyone and anything you see, and then probably yourself. Also see: “going apeshit”. 

No doubt this phrase got its start from actual real life events. I have listed a couple possibilities below:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/31/national/main1259522.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/11/nyregion/former-postal-worker-stabs-3-and-is-fatally-shot-by-police.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FP%2FPostal%20Service
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/09/us/ex-postal-employee-is-arrested-in-deaths-of-two-in-california.html

Many people say that to "go postal" means that you have gone crazy and showered bullets at numerous innocent bystanders.  The origin of the word, as we have established, must come from these postal workers that, well, go postal.  But my friends, I must tell you that it is actually the postal workers that "go postal" who are actually the normal ones and the ones who stay quiet that must be the ones who are actually insane.  Beware of the content mailman, for he is the crazy one.

Don’t agree?  Have you ever been to the post office?  I know Spike (an avid reader of TML) has heard me rant and rave about how shitty the postal service is.  Don’t get me wrong- they are somewhat reliable I suppose, it is the people and the system that you deal with once inside the post office when you try to mail something that gets me wired up. 

When I am not writing for TML I sell Magnetacks online and in retail stores.  When people purchase them through my site I have the luxury of going to my local post office.  The office is in a high traffic area with lots of people so it is (usually) always packed.  No matter what time of day I go, there is always a line that wraps almost to the door (about 10-20 people long, on average).  DON’T PEOPLE HAVE JOBS IN SOUTH MIAMI?!?! The office only has two, rarely three, people working behind the counter.  Overall, I must give them credit, they are actually nice people but they just happen to be extremely slow and inefficient.  They always take their sweet ass time with every customer, bullshitting and telling stories about their kids and some other crap that no one cares about. 

On this day I was at the office mailing out samples to potential Magnetack customers and there was obviously a huge lineup.  After waiting for twenty minutes I finally get to the counter and Betsy*, helps me out with the samples I need to send.  I am kind of in a rush to get to class and I KNOW she was the last person I wanted assisting me because she talks so freaking much.  She proceeds to ask me what I’m sending, tells me she thinks Magnetacks are a great idea, she tells me how for Halloween she got a giant pumpkin costume for her car and then put cat ears on the windows and then how she wants to take her kids to a certain neighborhood to trick-or-treat because that’s where they give the most candy and then how she was a chaperone at her daughters field trip to the zoo and that all the kids wanted to be in her group and not the other groups because she is the funnest chaperone of all of them and then she said that one of the kids ran through a sprinkler and got soaked and then that all the kids started running through the sprinkler and then she had to make sure that none of the other parents knew they ran through the sprinkler because apparently it wasn’t allowed and then they had to go to the monkey section to write a report on the monkeys but the monkeys weren’t doing anything fun and how then all the parents would get mad at her because she ended up taking a handful of extra kids that weren’t supposed to be in her group.  (That is all true, I swear.)

Ok sorry for that little rant- but that isn’t even the best part.  Towards the end of my one night stay at the office, a lady behind me gave a really loud and obnoxious sigh as if to say “HURRY THE FUCK UP YOU SLOW PIECES OF SHIT”.  Betsy then told me that she doesn’t care how fast or slow she works because she doesn’t get paid more or less if she sends more or less packages.  “My supervisor is an asshole, he doesn’t give a shit about us.”  What a joke I thought, why would you be telling a customer this?  Now, because she said that, whenever I have to go to the post office, I look inside to see how long the line is, if there is more than five people, I drive 10-15 minutes to another part of the city and go to a different office because I can’t STAND to wait in that line. 

Which brings me to my experience at the other post office.  This is also a true (maybe a couple lines thrown in but still true) conversation with a postal worker:

Employee: "This big box is flat rate, $4.95.  You can put as much in the box as you want and it's all the same price."

Me: "That's what she said."

Employee: "Pardon?"

Me: "How much for that smaller box?"

Employee: "This one is also $4.95 but it is not all you can fit.  The price varies depending on how much you put in the box."

Me: "That's what she said.  But why is the smaller box, that clearly holds less, more expensive than the bigger one that clearly holds more?"

Employee: "Sir, that's a tough question.  This is the post office, you don't ask tough questions here."

So as you can see, for anyone to work at a post office and NOT go postal means that they are the quiet kind of insane person, kind of like Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi) from Con-Air that is the scariest one of them all.  The guys who actually really go postal are the ones that have common sense and they just can’t take working there anymore.  And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go open a FedEx account so I don't have to go to the post office ever again.

*Betsy is not her real name.