Fiscal September will come to a very strange close for many IT companies who collectively announced today that they would go dark in the last week of the month. A spokesperson for IBM gave the following statement, nearly identical to statements given by upwards of ten thousand different companies worldwide:
Unusually, over ninety percent of our techs have requested time off during this week of the year. We typically handle our requests for time off in a simple “first come first serve” manner, but when we began telling our employees that we couldn’t fulfill their requests they began raving and violently thrashing about our offices. We were concerned at first, but when we realized how many of our peers in the industry were experiencing the same thing we realized it would just be best to just let them take the week off.
A spokesperson for Symantec detailed their rationale for the decision:
Honestly, it works out best for our company. Our employees have vacation time that they are entitled to. Going dark for this week, during a relatively slow period of business in the year, allows us to ensure that our staff will be at optimal efficiency going into what is sure to be another very profitable fourth quarter.
EMC Corporation gave the following statement as well:
This event is eerily similar to what we went through during the second week of fiscal December back in 2010, when the majority of our employees all called out sick during the exact same days. We never discovered the exact reasoning behind the mass unavailability of our employees, but considering that it had little to no effect on our business we’re really not too concerned with going dark between September 23 and September 28.
We highly recommend checking any networks that you or your company uses prior to these dates, as finding a support technician will be very difficult during this time. We are doubtful that we’ll learn what is going on behind these strange occurrences, but we’ll be sure to get that information to you if it ever becomes available.
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