HMV force skirts on female staff, hair cuts for men and no tattoos

Looks like a thinly  veiled attempt to get rid of a lot of the staff and nit have to pay them anything. Boss of mine did a similar thing a few years back. Worked in a small music store where the dress code was wear what you want. The place did a decent trade and we specialised in rock, metal and punk and as such had loyal customers who every week would be in buying hard to come by stuff. One day the owner decided he wanted to get more involved so he started coming to the shop and sitting out back watching porn as he pretended to work.

He decided on a whim that we would get rid of a large section of the stock and put in mobile phone displays. We'd sold they got ages but it was never a big part as the profit on them was tiny. Lost good third of the CD shelving and over the homing weeks he made more and more changes. Got rid of the metal, punk and rock sections and instead concentrated on country and western, Irish music and pop. The profit margin on these were tiny and we'd often have to sell them at a loss. One day I got text at 10pm to say that I need to show in in black suit pants, a white shirt, black tie and black shoes for the next day. It went on to say I had to remove all piercings and was required to cut my hair and dye it black as at the time I had a blue Mohawk. Not owning any of the items of clothing he wanted and starting work at. 8:30am I compromised and wore black jeans, black runners and a black shirt. Refused to but my hair or dye it but I did replace some my piercings with more discreet ones. When he arrived in at work at 11 he screamed and roared an went absolutely crazy making such a scene that the people working next store came running in to see what was happening. I told him he could stuff his job and left. Few hours later I got a call begging me to come back, he didn't understand how the till or stick system worked and had to close the shop early to deal with other stuff. I told him I'd go back but needed to be paid up to the end of the week and all arrears paid. He agreed so I thought screw it nothing better to do and as I was going to college that year every cent counted. He still insisted on the dress code but relented on the hair and piercings. Anyways I worked there another two weeks before one day I got to work and found my key no longer worked, taped to the window behind the shutter was an envelope with a letter that simply read you're fired. Turns out that he had hired a friend of his to replace me. Getting no notice annoyed me and the guy was a tosser but I really didn't care . 

The store stayed up only a few weeks longer and afterward I discovered that when he fired me he'd hired a friend if his who was working for 4:50 an hour. The guy had maybe three words of English and between the two of them they knew nothing about music or the phones we sold. I'm pretty certain he'd planned to close the store and his insistence on the uniform was him hoping I'd quit or give him an excuse, why else send the text at 10pm the night before an 8:30 start. Loved how he had to come grovelling back and was really happy when the place closed. He's now facing serious legal trouble for his many under handed and illegal tricks including non payment of tax.

Reckon that HMV may be trying a similar tactic and hoping to shed a good percentage of their long term staff and save a fortune if/when the company goes belly up. Personally it would put me off shopping there as one thing I like about HMV is how most of the staff have a clue about the music and films they sell. Most customers don't care if the guy has a tattoo on his face as long as he knows what he's talking about.