Chapter 6

Associate Violence

Abstract

All organizations have a risk of violence in the workplace and all have the ability to see the various warning signal behaviors that occur prior to that violence, provided the perpetrators are known to the organization. When an organization builds a program designed to prevent violence, it must ensure that the goal is to detect these behaviors early enough to allow for proper management of the situation. The vast majority of the cases of violence or threats of violence in the workplace are not the highly publicized mass shooting cases, which are few, but rather they are the more common stalking, harassing, and intimidating behaviors that can lead to violence. These actions must be treated as precursors to violence and not allowed to persist. Far too often organizations tolerate or overlook disturbing behavior only to have it erupt in actual violence. Becoming well versed in the warning behaviors of those moving toward violence is a significant step toward preventing that violence.

Keywords

addiction
behavioral warning signs
disturbing behavior
emotionally attached employee
mass shootings
multiple homicide
outbursts of rage
red flag behaviors
revenge
snapped
suicide
threatening behavior
troubled associate
violence, workplace shootings
written manifesto

“A ‘snapshot’ feature in USA Today listed the five greatest concerns parents and teachers had about children in the ’50s: talking out of turn, chewing gum in class, doing homework, stepping out of line, cleaning their rooms. Then it listed the five top concerns of parents today: drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, suicide and homicide, gang violence, anorexia and bulimia. …Between my own childhood and the advent of my motherhood—one short generation—the culture had gone completely mad.”

—Mary Kay Blakely, author and Associate Professor Emerita, University of Missouri School of Journalism

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“He just snapped; there was nothing we could have done.” Frequently this has been the sound bite that that survivors of workplace shootings and the coworkers, friends, and family of the shooter offer to the news media after a multiple workplace homicide occurs. This rationalization may make them feel better, but there were undoubtedly noticeable and escalating changes in the shooter’s behavior indicating trouble was on the way. Either no one paid attention or they didn’t know who to talk to about their observations. One of the benefits of the constant media coverage of these multiple homicides is that the news media continues to cover the investigation and trial of the shooter and people see that there were red flag behaviors that were missed and the shooter did not just snap—there was a lot of planning put into the tragic actions of the shooter.
As an example, let’s review one of the worst shooting rampages in U.S. history, which is the shooting at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) campus. On April 16, 2007, 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people before taking his own life.
The seeds of this tragic event, however, had been growing for several years. Sixteen months prior to the shooting, on December 13, 2005, Cho was ordered into outpatient treatment by a judge after it was reported that he had been making suicidal statements to his roommates. Cho’s angry and often violent writing for class assignments worried both professors and students alike. He was released after a mental health facility’s evaluation cleared him of being a risk to himself or anyone else.
On February 9, 2007, Cho purchased a 0.22 caliber pistol at a local gun shop. One month later Cho purchased a 9 mm pistol and ammunition at a different gun shop.
On April 16, 2007, Cho entered a campus dormitory and shot one female and one male student. He then proceeded to the post office where he mailed a package to NBC News in New York that contained a video, photographs, and his written manifesto. He then proceeded to a classroom building, chained the doors shut, and began his shooting rampage, killing 32 students and professors and wounding 20 more prior to turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. Cho’s video and manifesto showed that he harbored a grievance toward “wealthy brats.” The subsequent investigation did not show any evidence that Cho knew any of his victims. [1], [2], [3]
Although this is a very high-level view of the events preceding and occurring during the rampage shooting, it does demonstrate that Cho had mental health problems for at least two years prior to the shooting that had not been completely addressed. He had issues with anger and violent ideology that students and professors knew about, but that knowledge never made its way to anyone who would be in a position to help. Cho meticulously planned out his day of rage, making videos, taking photographs, and writing his manifesto. He researched and made choices about which firearms to purchase, and he learned that he could increase his body count by chaining the doors closed and keeping law enforcement’s first responders at bay.
Before we proceed, we wish to state that the goal of any organization’s violence prevention program should not be to terminate associates for “crossing the line” or to prosecute them later if they act out in an unlawful manner. The goal of your program is the early identification of the troubled associate and getting that associate the help he or she needs or removing that associate from the organization before he or she becomes emotionally attached to the job. Early identification and intervention is a key component of your program as shown in our next case study.
Robert was the regional director for his company and the top executive working out of the company’s regional office. Robert was an experienced executive having worked his way up in the company over the past 16 years. Robert’s experience gave him confidence that he could handle pretty much anything that came up. That feeling of confidence was about to be shattered.
As usual Robert arrived before most of the other people. He came into his office with a cup of hot coffee, settled into his desk, checked his appointments for the day, and logged into his email to clear up some overnight correspondence. One of the emails came from outside the company, having later been determined as being sent from an Internet café. This anonymous email stated that Janice, an employee in the accounts receivable department, went into an angry rage yesterday afternoon and stabbed two holes in the department manager’s door. Robert thought this to be absurd and determined that someone must be trying to get Janice in trouble. Janice had worked there for more than seven years with acceptable performance reviews and Robert had never heard of any complaints being lodged against her. Nonetheless Robert got on the elevator and headed down four levels to the department where Janice worked because his company had a policy that all complaints had to be investigated, even the anonymous ones that are thought to be unfounded.
When Robert walked into the accounts receivable department, he saw that Janice was one of the few employees to have arrived. Jeff, the department manager, had not come in yet and his door was still closed. Robert went over to Jeff’s office and became a little unsettled when he saw that there were two deep puncture holes in the door.
Robert then went to Janice’s cubicle and asked her if she knew what made the two holes. Janice replied that she did know and stated that she was so mad at Jeff yesterday afternoon that she grabbed a screwdriver with the intent of stabbing him in the neck. Upon seeing that Jeff had left for the day Janice decided to “take it out on his door.” It was at that point that Robert’s confidence abandoned him. Nothing in his 16 years on the job had prepared him to handle this type of an incident. Robert did know enough to immediately go to the human resource department who initiated a full investigation.
The investigators began interviewing other employees and reviewing Janice’s personnel records. They found that statements given by witnesses of Janice’s behavior were in stark contrast to the documents in her personnel file. The investigators found that while Janice had worked there for seven years, her coworkers had been deathly afraid of her for the past five. A year or so after she came on board, Janice began to become irritable. She balked at some of the assignments she was given and openly spoke about her disapproval of her managers. Her verbal behavior began to escalate and people shied away from her as she frequently unleashed a torrid wave of obscenities at the slightest provocation. She began to accuse others, usually the managers, for sabotaging her work. She became enraged if office supplies were out of place when she went looking for them or if someone inadvertently removed one of her documents from the printer. Her behavior then escalated from being verbally abusive to physically threatening. Janice would frequently throw things like staplers or tape dispensers when she was angry. The investigators were shown several file cabinet drawers that would not close properly because Janice had slammed them so hard, so many times. The employees interviewed also identified at least eight coworkers who allegedly left because of Janice’s behavior.
Her personnel files, conversely, were devoid of any mention of any such conduct. There were no disciplinary warnings and her annual performance reviews were all satisfactory in nature with no noted behavioral problems. It was also noted that Janice seemed to have been frequently transferred from department to department. On interview, her present and past department managers stated that they all knew of Janice’s temper and behavior, but they were too afraid to discipline her for them. Whenever things began to boil over, rather than address the issues, she was transferred to another department. In fact, the investigation uncovered that occasionally the job she was transferred into was at a higher pay grade than the job she came from so, in effect, Janice was being financially rewarded for terrorizing the workplace.
Even though there were no prior disciplinary actions taken with Janice, the company was adamant that she had “crossed the line” and had to go. Terminating her, however, was not without risk. During her discussion with the investigators, she told them that she frequently blacked out during her outbursts of rage and had no idea what she had just done. She also related that she occasionally had thoughts of suicide and that her job was the only stable influence in her life.
So Janice needed to go, but how best to do it? How do you soften the blow in such a sensitive case? Here’s what the company did: Janice was put on a medical leave and voluntarily entered counseling under the company’s Employee Assistance Program. After six weeks of counseling, the psychologist felt that Janice was stable enough to face her separation from the company. The company met Janice in the conference room of a hotel near her home. They explained that she was being terminated and was given a modest severance check with a guarantee that the company would pay for her next six months of counseling sessions. This was certainly a generous plan, but Janice was extremely upset. Her complaint, and rightfully so, was that she had been with the company for more than seven years and during that time, no one had ever told her that her behavior was inappropriate and might cause her to lose her job. Her department manager’s tacit response to her behavior was tantamount to acceptance. Her displeasure with the termination did not result in an outburst of rage but she was extremely and visibly upset—so much so that for the next three months, the company paid for off-duty police officers to sit in a conference room just off the main lobby in case Janice returned.
The preceding case is perhaps the best example of how not to handle a disruptive associate. So many issues were mishandled that they compounded the problems and exemplified the adage that “ignoring problems does not make them go away, it only makes them bigger,” or as we like to say, “Negligence is the fertilizer that grows big problems out of small ones.” This case also exemplifies the reason for identifying problems early: They are easier to handle when they are small problems. Had a department manager addressed Janice’s behavior when she first verbally lashed out, she would have at least been on notice that her behavior was inappropriate, she would have had the opportunity to identify the actions that were inappropriate, and she could have striven to improve her demeanor. If she could not reign in her temper, then perhaps she could have been encouraged to enter anger management counseling through the company’s Employee Assistance Program. If she did not take advantage of the counseling program, then at lease the diligent ongoing disciplinary action from her manager could have brought the matter to a conclusion before five more years passed—and before Janice attained a strong emotional attachment to the job, before her actions became physically threatening, and before eight or so coworkers left the business because they could not stand the stress of one more day in the office with her.
With Janice’s case in mind, as well as the Virginia Tech shooting and the other case studies from the previous chapters, let’s take a closer look at the behaviors and motives that you should be cognizant of in the attitudes and actions of those within your organization.
One of the first things to mention is that you are looking for changes, usually negative, in a person’s behavior. No one commits a mass murder on his or her first day of work, so similarly, no one exhibits disruptive, threatening behavior on his or her first day of work either. Cho was at Virginia Tech for well over a year before his behavior escalated into a shooting rampage and Janice was working at her place of employment for about two years when people first noticed a negative change in her behavior. The changes in behavior will be noticeable to anyone who is paying attention.
Another important note is that many of these motives and behaviors can be intertwined. For example, the motive may be revenge, but it can be expressed by outbursts of rage or even in subtler behaviors, such as absenteeism and/or poor work performance. Finally, the behaviors and motives described in the following section are also present in the perpetrators who we classify as external threats, so keep these in mind as you read the next chapter.

Motive and Behavioral Warning Signs

Revenge. One of the most common motives is revenge. [4] Perhaps the person has experienced the end of a relationship, abandonment by friends, and disciplinary action at work or the loss of a job. Whatever the real or perceived snub, the perpetrator’s notion of a grievance with someone, some people, or at the organization as a whole can give him or her cause to plot revenge. In some situations the grievance is minor and blown out of proportion by the perpetrator. However, grievances dealing with the workplace—real or otherwise—should never be ignored. Feeling that no one will listen or that no one cares can often escalate the perpetrator’s mood and actions. By giving the grievance a proper and serious airing, they may feel that at least the organization gave them their “day in court” even if the determination did not go in their favor. Occasionally we will have an organization relate that they do not like to hear petty grievances or grievances that they know are either false or blown out of proportion because it only encourages the person or others within the organization to file frivolous claims. First, these organizations are making the determination that the claim is frivolous without due diligence, which, at best, may be a violation of collective bargaining agreements as well as state and federal regulations regarding employee grievances, whistleblowing, and ethics. Second, we would much prefer to have someone filing claims than shooting up our facility. As long as they are filing claims, they at least still have faith in the grievance process. The lesson to learn here is that your organization should have a well-publicized grievance program.
Attendance problems. The first place that potential trouble can be spotted is in someone who suddenly develops attendance problems. If workers are being bullied at work, they may not show up the next day. If workers are upset with a coworker, they may not show up the next day. If workers are upset with a supervisor or with the company in general, they may not show up the next day. In short, if someone has any anxiety about being there, he or she may not show up to work. Additionally, failure to come to work can also be the first sign of someone taking revenge on the organization. If workers don’t come to work, then their assignments have to be shifted to other coworkers. Everyone in the department will suffer and the productivity of the work group is diminished.
Sometimes attendance problems are indicative of abuse at home as discussed in Chapter 5. Sometimes attendance problems are the result of substance abuse. Last, attendance problems can also occur if the person has developed a chronic illness. All of this means that if someone’s attendance has become problematic then find out why and see what can be done to help.
Negative changes in work performance. Over time there can become a marked change from acceptable or even good work performance to unacceptable or poor performance. This can also go hand in hand with attendance problems. If someone is frequently absent, then his or her workload is backing up.
Revenge can also be a factor in poor work performance. The worker might be slowing down because he or she wants to make the supervisor or even the entire work group look bad to company executives.
Poor work performance can also be a result of someone who feels overcome by the job or overwhelmed with life, and is questioning why he or she should continue with either. These are all indications that the person may be in crisis. Poor work performance should be addressed to find out and resolve the reasons for the negative change in work performance.
Withdrawal from others in the organization. When workers who had normal, healthy social relationships with their coworkers and supervisors suddenly withdraw from them, there is a problem. It may be that there is a problem at home or it may be that there is a problem at work, but there is a problem, and as we learned in the case with Janice, it is much harder to resolve problems when you ignore them and give them time to grow; they are much easier to address when they are in their earlier stages.
Negative changes in appearance and hygiene. If someone used to be attired in clothing appropriate for your business but begins to dress down, perhaps wearing the same clothing several days in a row, perhaps wearing t-shirts with graphics and verbiage that are inappropriate for your organization and are insensitive to coworkers, then something has changed in this person’s emotions. A further symptom is negative changes in the worker’s hygiene: Perhaps the worker let his or her hair grow out and did not bother to comb or style it before coming to work. Another frequent symptom is failure to bathe at appropriate intervals or failure to bathe at all. This is all indicative of something changing for the worse in the life of the worker, and needless to say, this is behavior that needs to be looked into and not ignored.
Feeling that someone or everyone in the organization is out to get him or her. Feelings of persecution are warning signs that need to be heeded. This is an indication that the person’s reality has changed and he or she might become chronically irrational. This is also a time to make sure that the worker is not harboring an unheard grievance. If the worker has a grievance that the supervisor ignored, this can fuel the notion that the supervisor is out to get the worker and eventually lead the worker to believe that the organization, as a whole, is out to somehow hurt him or her or sabotage his or her career. These unresolved feelings could escalate into outbursts of rage and escalate even further to the person causing damage to the organization’s property during the rage. This is a particularly dangerous situation as the next escalation of the behavior usually involves someone being harmed. It might be an intentional assault or collateral damage that occurred during the rage, but the result is the same: someone got hurt on your premises because of someone’s actions that were not appropriately addressed and you failed to protect the injured party.
Addiction. Whether it is abuse of alcohol or drugs, we have frequently seen addiction in the background of those who have perpetrated threats or violence. Addiction can also be a reason for attendance problems, work performance issues, and negative changes in appearance and hygiene. Further, the abuse of drugs and alcohol can also repress a person’s inhibitions and prompt the worker to say and do things that he or she would not do when in a sober state. Substance abuse can also disrupt the brain’s chemistry and escalate behavior toward rage and violence. Regardless, time and time again, we have seen enough problems with addiction to know that alcohol and drug abuse is a trap that from which the addicts cannot free themselves from without help. They may not accept your help, but you owe it to the addict, your coworkers, and your organization to try.
Easily angered escalating to outbursts of rage. We have already discussed anger and rage as a part of other behaviors, but we note it here as its own symptom because it may be the first action of which people take serious notice.
Violent and/or suicidal ideation. This ideation can be expressed verbally, in writing, or in social media posts and contains expressions of the satisfaction the worker will feel when he or she takes their violent revenge, or the regret, sorrow, and guilt that the worker will feel when he or she takes his or her own life. In many instances the individual wants others to see and understand these feelings so this information may be easily discoverable.
Contextually inappropriate interest in firearms and/or explosives and recent acquisition of multiple weapons. [5] There are those who view anyone who owns a firearm with suspicion. We don’t want to enter into a political debate, but we do want to make a point. There are approximately 90 million adult gun owners in the United States versus approximately 113,000 acts of gun violence annually. [6], [7], [8] Please do not misunderstand us, we are not inferring that 113,000 acts of gun violence is an acceptable level; it is not. The point we are trying to make is if you paint every gun owner with the same broad brush of suspicion, you will not be able to hone in on identifying those who present a real risk. The difference is the context in which their interest in firearms is presented. If they talk about firearms in the context of hunting; trap and skeet shooting, or other competitions; recreational target shooting; or even self-defense, they are not showing any indications of violence toward another person regardless of whether you personally find those activities to your liking. There are even organized groups who obtain period firearms and uniforms and reenact every U.S. military campaign from the Revolutionary War to World War II. Conversely, if the associate’s conversations about firearms dwell on death with violent verbal imagery about the potential injuries the firearms can cause, then there is reason for concern. Simply stated in another fashion, if their conversation about firearms would cause a reasonable person to feel intimidated, then this requires your follow-up.
Contextually inappropriate and intense interest or fascination with previous active shootings or mass attacks. [5] It is commonly known that many shooters in the planning stages of their own shooting rampages have studied other mass murderers. One recent example is Adam Lanza, who killed 27 people and injured 2 more in the 2012 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was found to have been obsessed with many of the prior mass murders that took place in recent history, such as:
• The 1999 Columbine High School shooting, which left 15 dead and 24 injured
• The 2006 Amish school shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, where 6 died and 5 were wounded
• The 2008 Northern Illinois University murders, which took the lives of 6 people and injured 21 more
• The 2011 mass murders in Norway, which killed 71 people and injured 241 [9]
Troubled individuals who harbor such obsessions do not publicize them widely, however, they are not kept top secret either. Evidence of these obsessions are observable should anyone take notice. We will discuss this further in Chapter 7.
Extreme recklessness with finances or in sexual encounters with a complete disregard of future consequences. [5] This explanation is fairly obvious and it is also means that the person has reached a dangerous point in his or her behavior escalation. These people have given up on any resolution for their real or perceived problems, and they have resolved themselves to the notion that violence, either to themselves or others, is how their troubles will end. As such, they may irrationally spend or give away money or other assets and engage in promiscuous and unprotected sexual encounters.
Documenting their rationale in a written manifesto. In the post-incident investigation of mass murders, it is sometimes unclear what prompted the perpetrators to commit their heinous crimes. Others, however, want the world to know why and sometimes they are hoping to spark some type of movement to effect social change. Virginia Tech’s Cho documented his manifesto in writing, video, and photographs and sent it off to NBC News. Anders Breivik, who perpetrated the tragic killings in Norway, left a 1500-page manifesto. Dylann Roof who killed nine parishioners at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in 2015 left his manifesto in the form of a website. And the worst mass murderer in history got his manifesto published as a book—Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which is still available at bookstores today.
As we end this chapter, it is important to make two important notes:
1. When we discuss behaviors that may be indications of future troubled behavior and possible violence, we should be looking for clusters of negative and sustained changes in the individual’s normative behavior. On any given day, anyone of us might temporarily exhibit one or more of the aforementioned behaviors because of some stress factor that we are experiencing and from which we will recover fairly quickly.
2. Although these aforementioned behaviors are a good guideline of warning signs, the list should not be considered to be complete. If we were to declare this list to be the final word on disturbing behavior, there would be an event in the near future that would uncover additional symptoms not recognized in any prior workplace violence event. Assessing threatening behavior cannot be done via a checklist, as every case will have differences. The best advice to give is to note any behavior that seems troublesome, whether it is on this list or not, and then investigate the reasons for and the implications of the behavior.
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