The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence

by Gavin De Becker

  Wayne was allowed to pick up the package and take it to his room. Soon after, Trinka Robinson, the resident director of his dormitory, came and asked Wayne what was in his heavy little package. He refused to open it. She asked again, and he again refused, so she left. When she returned later with her husband, Floyd, the box had been opened. Wayne told them that it didn’t contain a weapon but rather three empty pistol clips, and some other gun parts. There was also an empty ammunition box. He said he’d ordered some of the items as gifts and intended to use others himself.

  Apparently electing to forget that Wayne had refused to open the package in Trinka’s presence, Floyd Robinson was satisfied. He later described Wayne as “very open with me and not at all defensive.” This observation was meant to communicate that same old “Who could have known?” even though by that point several people could have known.

  At around nine P.M. that evening, an anonymous male caller told Trinka that Wayne had a gun and was going to kill her, her family, and others.

  Trinka took the threat seriously enough to call several school officials. She also immediately took her children to the home of a school provost. Her husband joined them there at around 9:30. They decided they would go and search Wayne’s room. If they found a weapon, or if he resisted, they would call the police. But since Dean Rodgers hadn’t let them open Wayne’s package, how would he react if they searched Wayne’s room? Better call the dean, they decided, and that’s what they were doing when they heard the first shots.

  By the time the loud noises stopped, six people had been shot. Two of them were already dead. It had been less than twelve hours since Wayne had picked up the package that stimulated school officials to do everything except the obvious thing: call the police. Even the explicit warning call about Wayne’s intentions hadn’t convinced them to call the police.

  It was ten more days before Dean Rodgers made any public explanation, and people were anxious to hear what he knew about the incident. Instead, he told them what he did not know: “I don’t know anything about weapons. I don’t know anything about guns.” I am sure Dean Rodgers knew guns are dangerous, and I am sure he knew there were people he could call about the matter.

  Given that so little about Wayne’s feelings and perceptions was known to college officials, it would have been difficult to apply the JACA elements, but this is a perfect example of a case in which context alone is the dominant element of prediction: A student receives a package from a gun manufacturer; he refuses to open it or discuss its contents; he then opens it when he is alone; within hours, an anonymous caller warns that the student has a gun and plans to kill people. These things did not each happen independently; they all happened, and one could add another important factor: People felt intuitively that there was hazard.

  When Wayne Lo appeared at his arraignment for murder, he wore a sweatshirt with the words SICK OF IT ALL across his chest. That speaks my feelings about the many, many cases in which denial was allowed to turn into negligence, and in which people in a position to know were the same ones later asking “Who could have known?”

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  Having told several stories in which the warning signs were ignored and a tragedy occurred, I also want to acknowledge that the people involved—those who visited Edward Taylor to make him leave Jim Hicklin alone, those at Wayne Lo’s school, at Laura Black’s company, at USAir, even at the much-criticized U.S. Postal Service—were doing the best they could with the tools they had at the time. If they’d had the knowledge you now have, I believe they’d have made different choices, and thus, my observations are not about blame, but about education.

  Park Dietz, the nation’s leading forensic psychiatrist and an expert on violence, has noted that the case histories are “littered with reports, letters, memoranda, and recollections that show people felt uncomfortable, threatened, intimidated, violated and unsafe because of the very person who later committed atrocious acts of violence.” One case Dietz studied tells a story of denial in its most undeniable form: A man killed one of his co-workers, served his prison time, was released, and was rehired by the same company whose employee he had murdered. While at the company the second time, he alienated people because he was always sullen and angry. He made threats that were known to supervisors and he stalked a female co-worker. After he resigned (on the verge of being fired), he continued to stalk the woman and then he killed her.

  Who could have known?

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  Destructive acts against co-workers and organizations are not rare or isolated incidents. In an age of takeovers, mergers, and down-sizing, with people frequently laid off or fired, employee emotion is a force to be reckoned with. The loss of a job can be as traumatic as the loss of a loved one, but few fired employees receive a lot of condolence or support.

  While the frequency of violent incidents has increased, most of the influencing factors have remained the same for a long while. Many American employers hire the wrong people and don’t bother to find out a thing about them. Then employees are supervised in ways likely to bring out their worst characteristics. Finally, the way they are fired influences events as much as the fact that they were hired. Few people would knowingly light the fuse on a bomb, but many employers inadvertently do exactly that. Many come to me afterwards, but only a few come wanting to learn about the topic before it’s a crisis.

  I tell those clients about the most common type of problem employee, the one I call the Scriptwriter. He has several characteristics that are detectable early in his employment. One is his inflexibility; he is not receptive to suggestions because he takes them as affronts or criticisms of his way of doing things. Another characteristic is that he invests others with the worst possible motives and character. Entering a discussion about a discrepancy on his paycheck, for example, he says or thinks, “You’d better not try to screw me out of any money.” It is as if he expects people to slight him or harm him.

  The Scriptwriter is the type of person who asks you a question, answers it himself, then walks away angry at what you said. In this regard, he writes the script for his interaction with co-workers and management. In his script, he is a reasonable and good worker who must be constantly on guard against the ambushes of co-workers and supervisors. The things that go wrong are never his fault, and even accidental, unintended events are the work of others who will try to blame him. People are out to get him, period. And the company does nothing about it and doesn’t appreciate his contribution.

  When you try to manage or reason with such a person, you find that he is not reacting to what you say but rather to what he expects you to say; he is reacting to his script. His is a personality that is self-defeating. The old “jack joke” demonstrates this dynamic at work.

  A man driving along a remote stretch of highway gets a flat tire. Preparing to put on the spare, he realizes he does not have a jack to raise the car. Far in the distance, he sees the lights of some small farmhouses and begins the long walk to borrow a jack. It is getting dark, and as he walks along, he worries that the people will be reluctant to help him.

  “They’ll probably refuse to even answer the door, or worse still, pretend they’re not home,” he thinks. “I’ll have to walk another mile to the next house, and they’ll say they don’t want to open the door and that they don’t have a jack anyway. When I finally get somebody to talk to me, they’ll want me to convince them I’m not some criminal, and if they agree to help me, which is doubtful, they’ll want to keep my wallet so I don’t run off with their stupid jack. What’s wrong with these people? Are they so untrusting that they can’t even help a fellow citizen? Would they have me freeze to death out here?”

  By this point he has reached the first house. Having worked himself into a virtual state of rage, he bangs loudly on the door, thinking to himself, “They better not try to pretend there’s nobody home, because I can hear the TV.”

  After a few seconds, a pleasant woman opens the door wide and asks with a smile, “Can I help you
?”

  He yells back at her, “I don’t want your help and I wouldn’t take your lousy jack if you gift-wrapped it for me!”

  The Scriptwriter gives no credit when people are helpful, and this causes alienation from co-workers. His script actually begins to come true, and people treat him as he expects them to. By the time a given employer encounters him, he has likely been through these problems at other jobs and in other relationships.

  The Scriptwriter issues warnings: “You’d better not try to blame me for what happened,” or “I’d better get that promotion.” Even when he gets his way, he believes it’s only because he forced the company to give it to him. He still thinks management was trying to get out of promoting him, but couldn’t.

  When I review such an employee’s personnel file, it’s amazing how many serious performance or insubordination incidents are documented. Many are the kinds of things that companies could terminate for. He has made threats, he has bullied, he has intimidated. Sometimes the employee has even performed sabotage or already been violent at work, and yet he wasn’t fired because everybody was afraid to fire him. Managers have generally shifted him around from department to department, or put him on a late shift, or done whatever it takes to make him somebody else’s problem. Nobody wanted to sit down, look him in the eye, and fire him, because they knew he would react badly.

  Since this dynamic feeds on itself and gets worse, and because the longer he is there, the more he feels entitled to be there, the key is to get rid of a Scriptwriter early. (I am not going into the quagmire of legally acceptable reasons for termination, but rather addressing those cases in which there is cause to fire someone and the decision to fire has been made.) When you first have cause to terminate this person, it should be done. Be sure, however, that the cause is sufficient and that your determination is unshakable, because if you try to fire him and fail, you are setting the stage for the TIME syndrome, which is the introduction of threats, intimidations, manipulations, and escalation.

  Manipulations are statements intended to influence outcome without resorting to threat. Escalations are actions intended to cause fear, upset, or anxiety, such as showing up somewhere uninvited, sending something alarming, damaging something, or acting sinister.

  When dealing with a difficult and violently inclined employee, it is important to understand that TIME is on his side unless you act quickly. Management may correctly intuit that he will not go quietly, but the sooner in the process he is fired, the easier it will be. If you believe it will be hard to fire him now, you can be certain it will be even harder later.

  The Scriptwriter is often someone who has successfully used manipulations or intimidations in the past. His employer has, in effect, trained him that these strategies work and for this reason, he expects them to work again. When management does finally take the bold step of firing him, they are faced with a person who is shocked and who feels he is being treated unfairly. He may be partly right about the unfairness, because compared to all the things he has done that he didn’t get fired for, the cited reason may appear petty. He is angry, threatening, and cannot be appeased.

  When manipulations that have worked for him in the past appear not to work now, he escalates them. At this point, management must consider all the harms this person could do to the company or its personnel. When they saw this side of him before, they always retreated. This time, they’ve stood their ground, and he has upped the ante by saying or doing things that make clear the obvious: They should have fired him long ago.

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  Before I provide some PINs that are a call for further scrutiny in the workplace, I want to explain that I generally avoid the use of checklists because they mislead people into believing that there are shortcuts for high-stakes predictions. I have waited until this point in the book, when you are familiar with predictive resources and philosophies, before providing a list of behaviors. In less prepared hands, it could be misused. In yours, it will inform intuition.

  1) Inflexibility

  The employee resists change, is rigid, and unwilling to discuss ideas contrary to his own.

  2) Weapons

  He has obtained a weapon within the last ninety days, or he has a weapons collection, or he makes jokes or frequent comments about weapons, or he discusses weapons as instruments of power or revenge.

  3) SAD

  He is sullen, angry or depressed. Chronic anger is an important predictor of more than just violence. People who experience strong feelings of anger are at increased risk of heart attack (in fact, anger supersedes even such risk factors as smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol). Such people place others at risk and are at risk themselves. Accordingly, chronic anger should never be ignored. Signs of depression include changes in weight, irritability, suicidal thoughts and references, hopelessness, sadness, and loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities.

  4) Hopelessness

  He has made statements like “What’s the use?” “Nothing ever changes anyway;” “I’ve got no future.” He makes suicidal references or threats, or he makes or describes plans consistent with committing suicide (gets his affairs in order, sells off possessions, etc.). Pessimism is an important predictor of problems (just as optimism is an important predictor of success).

  5) Identification

  He identifies with or even praises other perpetrators of workplace violence. He refers to, jokes about, or is fascinated with news stories about major acts of violence. He is attracted to violent films, magazines like Soldier of Fortune, violent books, or gruesome news events.

  6) Co-worker fear

  Co-workers are afraid of or apprehensive about him (whether or not they can articulate their reasons). This PIN seeks to capture the intuition of co-workers.

  7) TIME

  He has used threats, intimidations, manipulations, or escalations toward management or co-workers.

  8) Paranoia

  He feels others are “out to get” him, that unconnected events are related, that others conspire against him.

  9) Criticism

  He reacts adversely to criticism, shows suspicion of those who criticize him, and refuses to consider the merits of any critical observations about his performance or behavior.

  10) Blame

  He blames others for the results of his own actions; refuses to accept responsibility.

  11) Crusades

  He has undertaken or attached himself to crusades or missions at work. (This is particularly significant if he has waged what he might characterize as a “one-man war”).

  12) Unreasonable Expectations

  He expects elevation, long-term retention, an apology, being named “the winner” in some dispute, or being found “right.”

  13) Grievance

  He has a grievance pending or he has a history of filing unreasonable grievances.

  14) Police encounters

  He has had recent police encounters (including arrests) or he has a history that includes assaultive or behavioral offenses.

  15) Media

  There have recently been news stories about workplace violence or other major acts of violence. Press reports on these subjects often stimulate others who identify with the perpetrators and the attention they got for their acts. Like public-figure attacks, major incidents of workplace violence tend to come in clusters, with perpetrators often referring to those who preceded them in the news.

  16) Focus

  He has monitored the behavior, activities, performance, or comings and goings of other employees, though it is not his job to do so; he has maintained a file or dossier on another employee or he has recently stalked someone in or out of the workplace. (Since nearly half of all stalkers show up where their victims work, companies are wise to learn about this dynamic.)

  17) Contact

  If he was fired, he has instigated and maintained contact with current employees; he refuses to let go and appears more focused on the job he just lost than finding other employment.
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  While no single PIN can carry a prediction, and not all serious cases will contain the entire list, these are some warning signs to be alert to. Most of us know or have known people who have a few of these characteristics, but if you work with someone who has many, that is a matter for further attention.

  When managers and supervisors and co-workers know these warning signs, they are far more likely to detect a serious situation before it becomes a critical situation. Park Dietz brought his brilliant thinking to a multi-year study of workplace violence incidents. After that, he and I produced and wrote a video training series used by many corporations and government agencies (see appendix 4). The comment we heard back most frequently from organizations using the program was that spotting these employees early was far easier than they expected. They also said that the most common resolution of these situations was counseling problem employees, not firing them. Counseling was possible because they recognized early the fact that a given employee needed help. After studying every major incident of multiple shooting in the workplace, Dr. Dietz concluded: