“Dell Computers [sic] eliminated its consumer sales division Thursday at its Oklahoma City call center leaving about 225 people without jobs, a company spokeswoman said,” Nathan Altadonna reports for News9.com.
“The center opened in 2005 after Oklahoma City provided $5.5 million in job creation incentives and $11.7 million in infrastructure improvements, such as water, sewer and street upgrades, according to the city’s Web site,” Altadonna reports.
“Several former Dell employees called NEWS 9 after seeing the story posted on News9.com Employees said they were given no warning before being fired. ‘The called us all into a room,’ said one employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” Altadonna reports.
“He said employees were given a 60 day severance packaged and were told if they wanted to apply for other jobs with the company they would have to go through the new hire process,” Altadonna reports. “Dell officials said the calls that used to be handled by Oklahoma City will be rerouted to Nashville, Tenn.; Round Rock, Texas and El Savador [sic],” Altadonna reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mainly El Salvador. Cheaper is better, right, Mikey? 
Give us an S, an I, a D! Give us an A, a G, a T, an M! Give us a B, a T, another T, an S! What’s that stand for?!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brad in OKC” for the heads up.]
holy….
is all of Dell closing down before february?
I am feeling a bit ‘beleaguered’ by all this news….
1500 jobs gone in alberta, Canada also. Dell Diddy Biddy! Feel for the folks, but great for Mikey!
Shut
It
Down
And
Give
The
Money
Back
To
The
Shareholders
@Cypher:
ditto.
Did Dell get concessions and deals from every city it went to? Was the expectation a long term presence by Dell? So all those cities got screwed, right, or do they get some compensation from Dell?
When are they going to close their operations in Bangalore?
This and the closing of the Edmonton call center could really hurt Dell’s exemplary record in customer service.
By the way, did anyone ever notice the similarity between the slanted “E” in Dell’s logo and the slanted “E” in Enron’s logo. A pure coincidence I’m sure.
Only two things come from Oklahoma…
Beleaguered is to go-to adjective, isn’t it?
It really blows to get laid off by a company that just got too big to give a damn about it’s customers any more.
Zune Tang better learn spanish so when his Ditty breaks, he call talk with the Dell tech people.
You know what. If SJ was asked what DELL should do? He won’t be such an arrogant ass like Mickey and insult him, his company and DELL users. He’s got more class than that. You can bet on it.
> Give us an S, an I, a D! Give us an A, a G, a T, an M! Give us a B, a T, another T, an S!
It seems like Dell is “shutting it down,” slowly and piece by piece. Unfortunately, when it’s over, there may not be so much left to give “back to the shareholders.”
What?! Zune Tang has been fired too?!? |o| Sad news…
I’m sure that if SJ was asked what Dell should do, he’d say something along the lines of “Michael has enough things to deal with without me trying to give him advice in the press. I wish him all the best.”
That would be the sweetest revenge of all.
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-jcr
We;re watching the slow demise of a company… because it’s founder can’t see the writing on the way!
And the only people hurt in this event is the little guy and the tax payer who put up ,the loot for the area jobs!
At this rate… there isn’t going to be any thing left to give back to the stock holders
Mike give up boy… your becoming a slut and you know even till the difference
I love the phrase “beleaguered Dell.” Suits them right. However, if evil is returned for evil, then evil increases and therefore wins. That goes for rudeness too. While “beleagured Dell” is a very clever turn of phrase, it ill becomes Apple or its customers to be rude to Dell. Let’s all wish them the best. Two things:
1. Everyone other than Apple fails to realize that a sure way to fail is to manufacture products for partners or customers. It’s all about the user experience. If the user doesn’t like the product, the customer won’t buy it from the partners, and the partners will go away. Microsoft’s partner program will kill them, because they are working the metaphorical cocktail party circuit instead of doing real business.
2. The only way to compete with Apple is to have an integrated solution. That means the best thing the PC manufacturers could do is pair off with Linux distros, eschew proprietary anythings, and target specific markets with integrated solutions. They would all be compatible with Apple and each other, and we could all live in peace and harmony with flowers in our hair–NOT. We’d still have the fun of competition and “na na na, my computer is best,” but without monopolies.
Okay, enough about Dell. Where’s the story about 10.5.2?
Dell’s website seems down…
MDN Magic Word: “mass” as in “Dell has reached critical mass”.
Evidently, Dell is in a beleague of its own.
Very disturbing, a 2 year employee must re-apply as a new hire. One employee spoke under anonymity, why? your out of a job, with no hopes of returning because the company simply doesn’t care about you, you may as well speak up. Yes there was a severance package, but, can you can trust that ?.
Wow. Nice of OKC to provide all that cash to bring the jobs in, only to have them leave less than 3 years later.
——RM
OKC should ask for their money back.
A brutal vision of what’s left of the Dell Support Help Centers:
http://www.illwillpress.com/tech.html
Have fun PC weenies!
Dell is being very generous and kind compared to NBI. In the 1980s, they fired every single employee they had, changed their line of business, and would not rehire anyone.
All of a sudden someone came from HQ and fired everyone. It was a bloodbath.
Michael Dell is like the rest of his kind. They’ve got theirs. The people have no bread? Let them eat cake!
Dollars to donuts this little shit has never been hungry or gone without a day in his life. But hell, it’s only business.
@Herkimer
Here you go:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/01/leopard_bug_fix_list_swells_to_130_with_latest_mac_os_x_10_5_2_seed.html
</I>”He said employees were given a 60 day severance packaged and were told if they wanted to apply for other jobs with the company they would have to go through the new hire process,”</i>
Man those Dell employees got B|TCH SLAPPED! Did Dell get their HR folks from Enron?
Now that I think about it, Dell is shutting down their business much like you shut down one of their PCs
1 Press the Start Button
2 Wait
3 Kill a few exe’s
4 Wait
5 Kill off something else…
6 Watch a blue bar fill up…
7 Wait for something else to die.
8 Consider pulling the plug
9 Wait for the inevitable crash.
Oh, thank you Michael Dell, for the extra big heaping helping of schadenfeude!
I’m so happy that I turned down a Dell job offer seven years ago when they were flying high. My friends in Round Rock called me a fool for turning down Dell. The money offer was good but the company just gave me the creeps.
All man, this is nothing compare to what Dell did couple of years ago. Back when they had that big layoff. About what 5000 workers was layoff in Austin. The plant on Braker lane had they people (50) come outside for a lunch time cookout and when they was outside eating, the Dell bosses knock the doors and made the people walk around the build to grab their stuff that the Dell bosses had left, not inside the building but outside the front part of the building. Which started the whole thing about Austin police had to be at the other building for the people that was layoff. A true story. I was at the Palmer building when they was taking some people way in police cars, but you know the news people did not show that on the news or the Braker Lane incident. Man I use to work there for 5 years as a driver for another company an I have personally seen some of this stuff myself and Dell is not nice to their people.
A Dell-CompUSA merger could rule the universe.
I know Mr. Dell is a favorite target for us Mac faithful, but let’s remember the families affected here. Best wishes to the laid-off employees – may they find employment quickly.
Unless there are specific “clawback” provisions, those cities got screwed. In Winston-Salem, NC, they gave Dell something like $250M in incentives, just a couple years ago, I hope they don’t pull out!
i live in okc and have some friends who were a part of this, so i know a little bit about it.
the truth is, they fired their sales team. there is only 1 reason to ever fire a sales person: underperformance. unfortunately, with dell’s computer line, the sales people didn’t have much to sell. dell products aren’t that great anymore.
these salespeople were also expected to sell some of dell’s in house software, which is awful. they failed to realize that companies can go to best buy and buy enterprise software for cheaper than what dell will sell it for.
dell will fill the seats left by the salesteam. i think they are going to hire some more call center people. i was offered a position there (as sys-admin, not salesperson) a while back, and now i am glad i turned it down.
as far as the 60-day severance, they gave most people $5k and kicked them out the door. they even had security escort people out. some salespeople who had big commission checks coming in (from sales from the previous month) were told that they were going to have to move to other dell offices (houston, tennessee) in order to receive their big commission checks.
everyone knows that sales is a volatile position. if you underperform, you go quickly. but because sales allows for commissions, you can make a lot more money than the working stiff if you are good at what you do and if you work hard. its the name of the game.