In a recent column I mentioned a mass shooting by a co-worker in Honolulu while I was still working with Xerox. The shooter, Byran Uyesugi, was a service technician who fixed machines. The men he killed were his teammates, fellow technicians. The massacre occurred at the start of a team meeting on November 2, 1999. Nine men were in the room. Seven died. All had known each other for years.
Wikipedia has a quasi-accurate description of what happened detailed under “Xerox murders.” But much is missing. There always is when dissecting human tragedies.
Due in the office for an 8:30 AM meeting, I was halfway out my hotel room door at the Waikiki Beach Marriott when the telephone rang. I paused and pondered whether to answer. Since no one calls when I’m on the road, I assumed there was a reason for the call. I stepped back inside and answered. A co-worker was on the line, on orders from the police.
“Don’t come in,” I was told. “They want you to disperse.”
I’m a big guy and could benefit from losing a few pounds but “disperse” was a curious word choice. Rather than debate it, I turned on the television. One of my co-workers, the talking heads were reporting, had just committed the most heinous crime in the history of Hawaiian statehood.
After the shootings Byran walked downstairs to his service van and drove away. The police assumed he was headed to the nearby sales office, which they evacuated in case he did. Byran didn’t go there. Instead he drove around and ended up in a park near Waikiki, where he sat in his van and read magazines. He was quietly reading them, waiting, when police pinned him down, cars screaming from every direction to keep him surrounded in case he attempted a getaway. I know this because I was nearby. I had “dispersed” to the Waikiki antique district where I aimlessly walked around, staring in windows but seeing nothing at all. My mind kept spinning with confusion.
This is Xerox, I thought. We are a family. We don’t hurt each other. We help each other. But I was wrong. Things had changed and would never be the same.
The morning he snapped Byran was a very hurt fellow. No one debates that. But I am a curious man and champion of people; I wanted to know why he did what he did. The pursuit of this insight was a harshly discouraged undertaking. Xerox personnel refused to discuss it. The media reports were mostly true but partly inaccurate. Everyone seemed okay chalking it off to a discouraged worker. That wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know how he got that way.
Byran is of Asian descent and lived at home with his father and older brother where opinions of the youngest did not matter. He repaired broken things, inanimate things, in isolation for a living. His hobbies were solitudinous pursuits: working on cars, raising koi (tropical goldfish), refinishing furniture, and target marksmanship. Nowhere in the man’s life was a happy outlet with social interaction.
For several years Byran had flashed several signals of his building unhappiness. Rather than manage through the frustrations, he let them build. At work two things happened to compound his stress: The company shifted away from mechanical to electronic engines (which required a new skill set to repair), and the company shifted to what’s called a “self-managed work group.” Self-managed teams aren’t told what to do; they have to figure it out among themselves. Rather than Byran being responsible for an identified fleet of installations, he’d now be responsible for whatever the team decided. This “pushing down” of responsibility from managers to reps often causes increased stress for task-oriented workers. It’s a nice concept but in practice creates far more serious behavioral ramifications than those issuing an ivory tower mandate understand.
Nowhere in this guy’s life was there positive reinforcement. None at home, none at work, none in his spare time. Year after year there was isolation, frustration, and a corroding self-image. All of us are human, none of us is Superman. The weight took its toll and one morning Byran fell. And because he did, so did seven others.
There is no happy ending here. Byran is still in jail and always will be. I think he was sent to Alabama due to Hawaii’s overcrowded prisons but I am not sure. Xerox and the aggrieved families have settled the financial terms of the tragedy but all remain haunted as they try to move on.
The building where the murders took place was vacated by Xerox after the shootings and remained empty until 2004, when TV producers for the show Lost built a sound stage to film indoor scenes. It is an appropriate show title, a sad and twisted irony that mirrors the man who so tragically was.
There are a lot of hurt people out there. Way too many. It’s up to us to help ease their pain. Don’t wait until something tragic happens to make you wish you had reached out to someone who’s struggling. Be good to people all the time. Doing so is invisibly vital, in ways that go far beyond the obvious. Be a positive influence as often as you can and encourage others to be the same.
Smiles and hugs are far more powerful than Glocks. Do your best to help prove it.