I've shopped loyally at BOOTS for years but was shocked with them of late. Last week, amid government guidelines on social distancing and shopping just for essentials, I popped to BOOTS in town and the lady at the door got the one thing I was after and served me at the door. She handed me the product on a little tray and took my card on the same tray before returning it to me along with my item on the tray, which they had used prior to take cash for a customer also. I realised that not only was it quite unhygienic but that the store assistant was far from 2 metres away from each customer. The real whopper however came the following week at Boots out of town (on Mother's Day nonetheless) when I joined the one-in-one-out queue in which only 4 people were being allowed in-store at a time. When my turn came the store assistant said 'only one of you is allowed in' as only one customer came out. I was waiting in line alone but with my very young son. I asked if she expected me to leave him outside alone, she replied I had to wait for 2 people to leave the store to be both let in. Fair enough. But to my horror she then let the single lady behind me in the queue in before me saying she had to let her in as she was single! I proceeded to tell her she was discriminating against me as apparent and ought to wait for 2 people to leave and let us in as we were in line, but she ignored me and commenced chatting to her colleague as the doors closed. The next lady behind me in the queue moved forward and commented on how out of order the store assistant had been and told me they should have allowed me and my son in first before the other lady as at that rate we would be waiting outside all day for a chance to enter as every 'single' person who went in before us slowed down the wait for 2 to get in. There was no apology when I was finally let in and another member of staff argued saying this was 'new to us' and 'we're doing the best we can'! However, any mother would know that allowances should be made for parents by law and that what occurred in the queue that day was blatant discrimination against me as a parent. BOOTS did not respond to the online complaint. I also note that the store assistant at this branch is hand-sanitising every customer entering the store with a bottle of Carex gel and is getting very close to people to do this, also not maintaining the 2 metre distancing measure at all! The website meanwhile is currently a joke - you get held in a virtual queue with over 200,000 people and wait more than 24 hours for your place in the queue. The downside is they only give you a 10 minute window when your place is available which I missed the first day having tea, the second day whilst asleep at night and the third again! Add this to the time I was given incorrect change and when I queried it was told by a manager my 'maths' was 'wrong', and when she saw she had made a mistake handed me the correct change with no apology, or the time I purchased a contraceptive and the lady serving me showed the item to her female colleague and both burst into fits of giggles, so much so they struggled to actually serve me! BOOTS must be inundated with complaints at the moment - I received 4 messages from BOOTS store by email this week stating how many compliments their staff are getting and how great BOOTS is - way more marketing emails than they usually send - presumably soothing their own ego! I will be boycotting BOOTS after years of shopping there and switching to Superdrug whose staff have been friendly and fab in recent months. staff are always friendly and you get served fairly quickly and actually I was surprised that they have as good a range if not more than BOOTS of some items and they have a points reward system also. Well done Superdrug ;)