“Going postal” is an American expression for suddenly losing one’s temper or control, sometimes with an implication of violence. The phrase is reliably associated with the early 1990s, but its exact first use—and the person who coined it—are not known. It became widely recognizable as reports of shootings at U.S. Postal Service workplaces accumulated, turning a grim set of events into shorthand for an explosive outburst.
One tragedy often linked to the phrase is the 1986 shooting in Edmond, Oklahoma. Postal worker Patrick Sherrill killed 14 coworkers and wounded six before killing himself. Further shootings at postal facilities in the early 1990s received intense coverage, and the repeated association between postal workplaces and mass violence helped the expression take hold. But the Edmond attack predates the phrase’s reliably documented period; it should not be presented as the confirmed moment of its invention.
As the expression spread, its meaning broadened. It could describe an actual violent episode, but it also became casual hyperbole for ordinary frustration: someone overwhelmed by a deadline might joke about “going postal” without any threat of harm. That shift made the phrase familiar, but also gave it a dark edge. Its use can trivialize real workplace violence or suggest that postal workers are inherently volatile.
A persistent myth is that postal workers were uniquely prone to workplace violence, as though the phrase named an established occupational pattern. The shootings were real and devastating, but the expression’s popularity is not evidence of such a pattern. Nor is there a well-supported single origin story that connects the phrase directly to one shooting. The safest account is that it emerged amid widespread attention to several postal workplace attacks and was in use by the early 1990s.
Today, “going postal” may appear in an office joke, a news account, or a description of someone losing their temper. “After the software crashed for the third time, he joked that he was about to go postal.” “She took a walk before the meeting, worried she might go postal over the budget cuts.” The phrase endures because it compresses anger, overload, and a troubling piece of American history into two memorable words.