It's a sure way to make a point. Commuters and school kids left stranded at bus stops, rideshare fares spiking and not a bus as far as the eye can see.
The snap - and "spontaneous" - strike which took all Transport Canberra bus services off the road on Friday was called because the Transport Workers' Union was fed up with what they see as the lack of action on driver safety.
That marked a significant escalation. Transport Minister Chris Steel had met drivers and the union before the October election, agreed there was a problem and took a policy to the election of introducing transport officers to the bus network, similar to the staff who patrol light rail services.
And then, a little more than a week after Mr Steel was reinstated as the minister, the union said enough was enough. Transport Canberra got the call at 4.30am on Friday. There were drivers finding out they would not be on the roads when they rocked in to work.
The safety concerns are real, genuine and need to be addressed. The union said fish heads were thrown over a driver on Thursday afternoon. This is unconscionable behaviour no one should experience at work. Drivers told The Canberra Times of the problems they had experienced at the hands of passengers.
But does 40 incidents a month, of varying severity, warrant a snap strike that interrupted, with virtually no notice to the community, the part of the public transport network that reaches the widest areas in Canberra and had more than 4100 services and 97,000 kilometres of travel planned on Friday?
And what about when the government says it is committed, albeit without a firm timeline, to resolving the driver safety issues, employing a force of transport officers and finding ways to hand them greater power to keep the bus network safe?
Some will think the strike was justified - there's a hint of union resurgence about the place, a stick-it-to-the-man attitude - others will think it's an outrageous breach of faith with the community who rely on buses as a public service.
Strikes always take on a public relations dimension. Whether the public blames the minister and the government for failing to take action, or whether they blame the union for being too quick to head to the barricades, will have an impact on both sides' next available steps.
The drivers are likely to garner sympathy from the public on the issue of workplace violence. But unannounced disruptions can quickly cancel out the good will as quickly as it was gained.
The action on Friday looked to be a no-holds-barred approach from the heavily unionised driver workforce, putting Mr Steel on notice at the start of a new Assembly term they wouldn't put up with what they see as nonsense.
Mr Steel was not about to be steam-rolled. He was on the radio early on Friday morning telling the public he'd instructed Transport Canberra to pursue all available options to restore bus services and stressing he'd already started, since the election, to improve safety on the network. (It was, however, borderline preposterous to hear a minister in a government that has won seven elections back to back say: "We've now been in government for a week.")
The dramatic Friday strike marks a difficult start to the relationship between the drivers' union and the minister in this new parliamentary term.
Mr Steel will also be under considerable pressure to improve bus service frequency - the Greens' support for Labor this term was partly agreed on this basis; the crossbenchers were quick to blame Labor for the strike - and a hostile union this early in the proceedings may make his task very hard indeed.
