IBM's pay drove me to start stripping

The story of Kitten Natividad, who quit her job with IBM to become a stripper (and subsequently to star in many a Russ Meyer film), should have brought the site hits rushing in from red-blooded Reg readers.

But for some readers - like Thomas Venieris - the kinky headline proved a mite confusing...

Man, I must be terribly sick!

I read the word 'stripping' and immediately thought of RAID arrays... I had to read the entire article to actually understand what you meant!

I *really* need some vacations... :-/

Ah, bless. For the benefit of Thomas and others like him, next week we will be explaining that there are also non-techie uses for words such as 'RAM' and 'Floppy' [Not to mention old-style BASIC's 'Peek' and 'Poke', and those famous Motorola 6809e mnemonics 'BRA' and 'SEX' - 8-bit Computing Ed].

Second up for a comment on the Kitten Natividad story was a woman we shall call 'Suzanne', who experienced a spot of deja vu over the whole sorry affair:

After coming to America from Australia for UCLA then working for IBM in Tech Support 1996/1997 and Nortel Networks (I know, I know... the bigger they come, the harder they fall) first in Wireless Verification and then as a webmaster 1997 - Jan/2001 I discovered the whole entertainment industry thing which as it turns out is far more lucrative even than my over-inflated ex-salary... albeit more brain-numbing.

I found your article about a ferociously ugly one-time IBMer entertaining and SOMEWHAT relatable, saving the fact that if I in any way resembled Ms. Natividad, well, never mind.

And thanks to another reader, whose comments aim to give us a glimpse behind the iron curtain that is IBM's employment strategy:

My last day with IBM is tomorrow. I have worked for IBM as a graduate since September 2000. Since I started, I have done approximately three weeks' worth of actual going-into-the-office-type work (This was at the end of January/beginning of February.)

The rest of the time I have been 'working' at home (ie. watching Oprah, doing the laundry, cleaning house). Despite this, I have continued receiving a paycheck. Not only that, I have received two pay rises (because they keep raising the starting salary for graduates).

And it's not just because I am lazy. I have begged for work. My manager has said more than once "Just enjoy your holiday - there's not a lot of work going at the moment."

Despite the fact that they have a lot of dead wood, like me (and yes, there are countless others), IBM has managed to do very well throughout this recent recession. I wish in no way to indicate that IBM is in trouble when I say that there has been no work. I just wanted to point out that they're not very good at streamlining their work force.