A Dundee student has lost her entire summer wages after her curtain company employers collapsed just hours before she was due to be paid.
Mhairi Rutherford, 22, said she is £700 out of pocket after Montgomery Tomlinson, who had a concession within Debenhams in the Overgate Centre, went into administration.
Mhairi and her workmate were told they had lost their part-time jobs via a conference call on Tuesday and that the company had no money to pay wages the next day.
She said: “After lunch there was an urgent email saying that we had to go on a conference call.
“They said they had been trying to get investors for the business and that had failed, so we were told that the company had gone into administration and we wouldn’t be getting paid.
“The administrator on the phone said to take our personal possessions and turn in our keys as we were now redundant.
“That was it. We had no prior warning whatsoever.”
Mhairi then had to call her manager, who is on holiday in France, and break the news that she had also lost her job.
Mhairi and her colleagues are three of over 500 people made redundant when the Flintshire-based company went into administration this week.
As well as Debenhams, the company had a concession at McEwens of Perth.
Mhairi said: “The wage that I’m missing is the money for working all summer there.
“Earlier this week I bought new work clothes for the first time in two years thinking I was getting paid.
“They told us at a seminar a couple of months ago that they were reinvesting in the business and they recently refitted all of the stores.
“The administrator said that we had to apply via the Government for redundancy money.”
Will Wright, joint administrator and restructuring partner at administrators KPMG, said: “Given the cash position of the business, unfortunately there are insufficient funds to make payments for August salaries and we will be working as hard as possible to assist employees in their claims to the redundancy payments office.”