Agreed. It paralleled my experience at Deloitte Consulting almost exactly up until they said 11 months of being "on the bench".

It was more like 3 weeks in my case probably (and after that consistent mind numbing 50 hour weeks). And during my short time in consulting I never met anyone else who was "on the bench" longer than maybe 3-4 weeks or so.

So yeah, I'd say the story is either exaggerated or an anomaly.

In my experience in Accenture I've seen several people 'benched' during a re-assignment, in some extreme cases for as much as 3 weeks - 1 month, but eleven months is utterly exaggerated. This is obviously bogus. Plus, when you're in stand-by you're supposed to be at the company's main offices (normally, you'd be working at the client's premises) doing online or offline training.