Workers Upset At Boss’s Alleged Animal Cruelty

Fuming postal workers say the vehicle maintenance shop was a nasty place to be even before their boss murdered the marmot.

But Joe Holub’s alleged critter clubbing has substantially upped the chaos level here at the U.S. Postal Service’s sprawling Spokane annex on Trent Avenue.

Holub, the vehicle maintenance manager, was cited June 12 for second-degree animal cruelty. One worker says he saw Holub wave a hapless marmot upside down by the tail and then clobbered it with a broom handle.

“Well, we have fresh meat for tomorrow,” Holub reportedly quipped before tossing the mortally maimed animal in a Dumpster.

If true, this gives new dimension to the term “going postal.”

Afraid to rat on his boss, Roger Lara called animal control after a co-worker told him the marmot was still alive and suffering.

“I looked at the picture of my children on my desk and knew I couldn’t look my kids in the eyes knowing I left that wounded animal to die like that …” writes Lara in his official statement of what happened.

A SpokAnimal officer found the cat-sized rodent huffing in the sun-baked Dumpster, its eye bulging from a blow. It later was put to sleep.

Holub rejected my offer to comment on his encounters with the animal kingdom or humankind. He did warn that “sometimes what employees tell about their supervisors isn’t true.”

The manager’s side, however, is contained in a grievance decision filed by a labor relations specialist. According to management, Holub went marmot hunting to provide a safe working environment for his employees.

Yep, those marmots have been known to attack like grizzlies.

Seeing the bushy-tailed animal wander into a shed, Holub claims he tried to scare it off by rattling a broomstick behind the storage bins.

Holub didn’t mean to kill it, states the report, but “must have hit it while he was banging the stick.”

He denies whacking the marmot while he displayed it like some safari trophy. Believing the animal dead, the document says, Holub “picked it up by the tail” and then laid it on the ground and poleaxed it “one time to make sure it was dead.”

Jack Kevorkian would have used gas.

Two of Holub’s employees say this is not the first time their boss has tried to provide a safe, marmot-free working environment for his employees. Those workers, who asked not to be named fearing reprisals (or maybe broomsticks), claim Holub bashed another marmot to death with a rock about a year prior to this incident.

“This guy,” sneers another vehicle maintenance worker, “you’d swear he was Rambo and Bruce Lee combined.”

The vehicle maintenance shop is more like a dysfunctional family than a workplace. There is so much hostility, much of it aimed at Holub, that a conflict resolution expert has been called in.

The marmot death has riled most of the 11 workers. They believe Holub did this to intimidate them, a claim that was denied in the grievance decision.

Marmots, which scamper all over Spokane’s riverside landscape, can be a nuisance. They sometimes climb into vehicles and dine on the wiring.

Although marmots may be pests, county prosecutors take animal cruelty cases seriously. “In all likelihood he’ll be prosecuted,” says Kathryn Lee, who supervises major crimes for county Prosecutor Jim Sweetser’s office.

Several weeks ago, the county dismissed the charge against Holub. That was strictly a procedural move, says Lee. Because the post office is federal, the U.S. Attorney’s Office get first crack. When the feds decline prosecution, which they no doubt will, the matter will kick back to the county.

Marmot abuse, of course, doesn’t share the same priority list with 22 murder cases Lee’s troops are preparing for trial. But Lee is an animal lover.

“It’s a solid case,” she says. “There’s no lack of evidence. He’s not walking away from this.”

The marmot sure didn’t.

, DataTimes