I am a pharmacist.

I trained - did my apprenticeship, in the days when that meant something - with Boots the Chemist. Like many other large companies, Boots has changed over the 40 years or so, since then, when their employees were genuinely valued and appreciated - into a huge faceless, heartless retail-based consortium where staff loyalty is neither expected, nor accounted for.

This sorry, value-less, inhumane approach to personnel, who are treated not like human beings, but as replaceable cogs in a money-making profit-driven machine administered by (themselves replaceable) middle-level management flunkies is just a part of contemporary British culture.

It's one of the many reasons I don't live in the UK any more, and never will again. Very sad story. I have no easy solution to the problem, except to encourage the lady concerned to jump up and down, scream violation and sue the bastards for every penny she can get!

And of course, to join the union and get their power (however degraded by the Thatcher beast) - on her side. Good luck, but not expecting much...