According to The Register, Microsoft dropped themselves in a bit of bother after booking the Meter Maids to appear at its TechEd conference on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Some of the 2,700 attendees at the event grumbled that the half-naked ladies’ presence objectified women. One of the key talks at the conference had been a discussion about getting more women to join the IT industry.

Microsoft initially claimed that they had somehow managed to book the Meter Maids without actually looking at their website and that they had no idea what the beach beauties would be wearing until the day of the conference. Which brings me to my favourite part of this article:

But Microsoft’s decision to claim innocence about the booking has angered chief Meter Maid Roberta Aitchison.

She told the SMH that Microsoft in fact chose what outfits the women should wear at the event.

“The garments were chosen specifically by them over a period of two to three weeks of them looking at photographs of the girls,” she claimed.

So someone at Microsoft was being paid to spend two to three weeks looking at photos of scantily clad women. Nice work if you can get it.