Men's Health

When Employees Turn Deadly at Work

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Denenberg says companies with formal grievance procedures could help some angry workers feel that their complaint has been heard by an impartial third party. For some, violent actions were the final result from encountering real problems that were never resolved. "If somebody had looked at the actual facts, what happened could have been avoided."

He recalls a 1998 office shooting at a Connecticut state lottery headquarters that left four executives dead, and how he called the employee's union chief to get information about the gunman. "He said, 'My first reaction was, I hope it's not Matt Beck,'" Denenberg says.

 It was.

Kathy Bunch is a Philadelphia freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications. She is a frequent contributor to WebMD.