Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) announced yesterday that the company will finally bring last year's layoff announcement to its customer service operations in a few contact centers. Over 900 employees in its Canadian Ottawa operations will be let go, along with approximately 300 in Dell's Oklahoma City customer contact center as well. In the case of the Oklahoma call center, consumer sales and consumer technical support are being hit hard, but the center will also take on more business technical support responsibilities.

Today is the last day of Dell's fiscal year, and it's a time when the company wants to take charges on its books instead of carrying them over to the new fiscal year, so the timing of these layoffs makes sense financially. However, the company was trumpeting growing both contact centers just over a year ago -- and now headcount reductions are happening. My, how a year can change things drastically, yes?

The company still has a long way to go in order to catch market leader Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which passed it last year as the world's largest computer maker. Dell responded by bringing in a bunch of new blood and by entering the retail market as quickly as possible. Perhaps when it bolsters sales back up, it may need to support those new customers with customer service employee re-hirings. Until then, it's just another zany day in the tech worker layoff arena.