If you watch Battlestar Galactica (and let's face it, nerds, you probably do) you know all about how Chief Tyrel put his foot down when he saw how terribly work conditions had decayed aboard the fuel refinery ship. After that kid got his arm broken in like six places the Chief pulled the big lever that stopped the conveyor belt from moving dilithium crystals or whatever through the refinery, then everyone started chanting in unison.

I can't remember what they chanted (or whether it was anything intelligible at all) but at my workplace the Space Union's rallying cry came to be rendered as, "No more warp fuel!"

Over the past few weeks as it has become increasingly apparent that several critical systems are very much kerfucked in the workplace, we have adopted the motto of the Space Union. Nobody's had their arm broken in six places or anything, but there's still a lot of sucking going on with regard to upper management which has left us scrambling to produce the improbable under conditions that are nearly impossible.

"Can we do this in 3D?"

"No, not until you get us the authoring software we were promised."

"I feel strongly this is best suited to a 3D look."

"I'm not arguing that with you."

"Why don't we have the software yet?"

"Because we're not empowered to order our own software, or manage our own departmental budget."

"I really want that software in here."

"Then order it."

"Let's meet for a side-bar planning session next week."

"Um, okay."

"So when can we get started on that 3D stuff?"

(Bonus points for spotting the dialogue lifts from Joe versus the Volcano, which we watched on Wednesday afternoon rather than work.)

Naturally, I can't get into the nitty-gritty but suffice it to say one issue that's been close to my heart is the way the company has renegged on a raise I was already getting for six months. This raise, which had been doled out in a series of bonus cheques, was supposed to be rolled into my salary on my anniversary as promised to me by the Vice President of Very Important Things.

It wasn't, though.

My anniversay rolled around and all I got was a book of gift certificates for beer, a glowing review from my manager, and a de facto pay cut of $500 a month.

(To add insult to injury, the government has assessed my bonused-up income from last year and decided I'm not the sort of fellow who deserves tax credits or child-care allowances anymore, and has thus cut my benefits. So, now I'm out somewhere in order of $750/mo compared to last year.)

The company's response: "Oh yeah -- er, sorry, eh? We forgot to make room in the budget for your pay. The thing is, we were desperate to get you in here last year and, well...anyways, now you're here. It's been a lean quarter, so we might have to ask you take one for the team. We'll discuss it and get back to you....um, eventually."

In fact, to draw an honest to goodness quotation, I was told, "We'll figure out a way to keep things cool, man."

We'll figure out a way to keep things cool? ...Man?

(Jesus Christ.)

So, while my bosses took the morning off to shop for ivory back-scratchers Littlestar and I had to try to figure out how to meet our new and surprising budgetary shortfall, which happened to fall on the heels of discovering that Baby Yam has spent the last month surreptiously cranking up the woefully inefficient electrical baseboard heaters all over the house, which has basically doubled our power bill.

I am a patient cheeseburger. I waited five weeks.

Meanwhile my colleagues had their own skirts in knots because of various other screw-jobs including a new policy that precludes taking company hardware off-site to work from home and a refusal to sign-off on any working from home that happened over the course of the past year. This means that employees who were expecting a tax break from maintaining home offices will now receive from Revenue Canada sweet fuck all. Surprise!

Yes, and personal calls can no longer be made on company subsidized mobiles -- another announcement that comes after the fact, when the bills are already due. And there will be no cost of living increases in wages for anyone, no bonuses, and no tax shelters.

Also, the Vice President of Very Important Things has sent her winged monkeys to curtail any use of Jabber or Internet streaming radio. And we're no longer authorized to apply patches, install software, or do any other kind of maintenance to our Macintosh workstations since the VP VIT has declared this to be firmly in the pervue of our new off-site out-sourced IT Retard Platoon whose terms of service state in bold that they don't support Macs in any way, shape or form.

"Herr Commandante, I need to install a patch for the new daylight savings time times and a couple of security holes."

"You cannot install without clearance from the IT Retard Platoon. End of line."

"Um, okay. Let me get them on the phone here. Hello? IT Retard Platoon? What's your position on installing the 10.4.9 update on my workstation? Yeah. Through the software update panel. Yeah. I've tested it on my home machines with no problems. Okay. Yeah, 10.4.9. I'm sorry? The who? The what? No, no, I'm running Tiger. Tiger. OS X Tiger. Under what? Visa? Oh, Vista. No, this is a Mac. Yeah, I'm familiar with your policy -- sorry for wasting your time."

"Well?"

"They don't know anything about it."

"Then you can't install it. End of line."

"Okay, but don't blame me when the automated backup gets borked because my clock is wrong."

"You can't just go installing things willy-nilly on our corporate firewall. End of line."

"I'm sorry -- what was that?"

"It could compromise our anti-virus filters or crash the volume shares, which would adversely affect everybody in the office. End of line."

"Don't you think the damage might be mitigated if we released a cloud of neutrino plasma from the Bussard collectors?"

"I don't have time to get into the technical details with you."

So, things had come to a pretty pass. Everybody was pissed off. We were being asked to steal music to save licensing fees, but then denied the use of LimeWire and BitTorrent (they still haven't caught on to Usenet, though). We were told we had to complete various projects in 3D without the benefit of 3D authoring software, and then chastized for making use of pirate copies. The VPN stopped working for anyone with a Mac, and the IP Retard Platoon won't help us troubleshoot it because, in their opinion, any time any thing doesn't do exactly what they expect it's because somebody walked too close to a Mac sometime in the last hour. Having a Mac involved in even the most glancing fashion is like a kind of contaminating cooties that gets the help staff off the hook for free.

So, now we have no access to our files when we're on-site on a show.

The other week the President of the United States of Paycheques came by to hang out in the studio for a few minutes to shoot the breeze. He sought sympathy for his various problems including a BMW whose intelligent transmission got confused and locked up the wheels while he was in the drive-through at Tim Horton's (nearly causing a riot), and how he's obliged to fork out $3000 for a new fuel injector head for his private airplane that'll make it fly 5% faster in turbulent air.

"I'd march in there and give him a piece of my mind," someone said later, "except I think they'd fire me, at this point."

And that's the rub -- that's why we say "yes massah!" or bite our tongues, tugging on our forelocks and crossing our fingers that next week's paycheque comes. That's why every negotiation is one way, weighed in favour of our benefactor barons.

An employee's only real leverage is threatening to quit, but it's never exercised for fear of being fired.

In considering this, I had a Happy Harry Hardon moment and said: "Fuck it."

I walked into work on Thursday morning and told my manager I was on strike. I wouldn't be coming in next week. I said I thought our founders and kings needed a few days to ruminate on my role in the company, and to consider how my absence might negatively affect our ability to produce anything. We could either discuss a New Deal upon my return, or make arrangements to end our relationship.

She said, "We've got a lot of really critical stuff going on next week."

I said, "That should help to highlight the issue for them, then."

When I came out of that meeting and reported on the results Unit A said, "Holy shit -- I wish I had testicles," and Unit B ran out to buy me a case of beer. Lady Producer and Girl Wonder Production Assistant joined us to drink and to vent, and to giggle at the dark, dark humour of our Grownup Flowerchild Technical Director's running commentary on the subject of getting shafted by the man. (After a few beers the subject shifted to getting shafted by ex-wives.)

While I drank I put my most valuable contributions to the current company concerns into an encrypted disk image. I didn't want anyone filling in for me: it's a work stoppage, not a work shiftage.

"No more warp fuel! No more warp fuel! No more warp fuel!"

I left at four. I turned the music up loud on the way home. I crunched my apple and bopped along. Bottles clinked in the trunk every time I turned.

So, I have a week off. Um, I should say at least a week off. I may or may not have a job waiting for me when I return.

Pray for me, Christians.