#optician problems

[morgendaemmerung89]

Someone forgot their eyebrows on my eye test device

[socialmediasocrates]

Visionworks commercials: Hundred day guarantee! We want you to like your glasses!

Visionworks internal memos: If you don't get the frame styling right the first time we'll send snipers to your fucking house. Your commission rate is getting slashed. Fuck you.

[thesassywallflower]

While watching tonight's episode...

The fangirl side of me was all "Mmm mmm mmmm, Sam and Dean in glasses! Yes and please! Me likey!" But the optician side of me was all "What the hell is going on with Jared's glasses?? Why are his temples riding so high above ears? Why did no one fix this? Is there not a single optician in the greater Vancouver area who could have adjusted those glasses?!" This is the curse of my profession... I can't watch anything or go anywhere without noticing people's poorly adjusted glasses.

[socialmediasocrates]

So I wear glasses and have since I was a small child and you just convinced me to never stop because I had no idea eye infections from contacts were a thing. Yeah I'm good, thanks!

So, you can absolutely get eye infections because you weren’t clean about your contacts. The contacts themselves, if properly sanitized between uses, will not cause eye infections, and daily wear ones are even better because you just throw them out after using them! 

HOWEVER.

A lot of people get really comfortable with their contacts and then just....do things that are incredibly stupid. You wouldn’t believe the number of patients we see in a year with an eye infection from LICKING THEIR CONTACTS. DON’T LICK YOUR CONTACTS. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT.

You also aren’t supposed to rinse them under tap water. There is bacteria in it. That bacteria won’t hurt you if you drink it; your stomach has adapted to it! It WILL hurt you if you put that bacteria DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EYEBALL. DON’T DO THAT.

Anyway, contacts aren’t more likely to cause eye infections, but being fucking dirty is.

[socialmediasocrates]

some of my patients’ parents should feel lucky that hippa prevents me from naming and shaming them publicly for the shit they pull

way too many parents think that confiscating their kid’s glasses or contacts is an appropriate punishment

[socialmediasocrates]

Hey don't ever rinse your contact lenses with water! There is bacteria in the water that will not cause problems if ingested but can and WILL give you the bacterial eye infection of a lifetime if you put it in your eye. I see those types of eye issues in our contact lens patients all the time.

ONLY USE YOUR SOLUTION OR STERILE SALINE TO RINSE YOUR CONTACTS.

If your contacts have been compromised (ie by tear gas or by insecticides or by whatever else) THROW THEM AWAY. THEY ARE MADE OF EXTREMELY LIQUID PERMEABLE MATERIALS. THE CHANCE OF THEM BEING SAFE TO WEAR AGAIN IS CLOSE TO NIL.

Don't fuck around and find out with your eyes. You get one set of them per lifetime.

[socialmediasocrates]

i’m mad as fuck and i must scream so my screed continues: the industry that i’m in is one dominated by people that are OLD AS FUCK and DATED AS FUCK that can’t see the forest for the very large neon green trees. i love what i do! i want to continue doing it! but i’m so extremely tired of keeping quiet and letting the internal mechanisms sort people out

THE OPTICAL INDUSTRY IS EXPLOITATIVE. IT’S DEEPLY EXPLOITATIVE. I’m not delusional enough to believe that every industry isn’t! Because for one reason or another they are! But the optical industry is allergic to airing out its dirty laundry! We keep all of our criticisms in closed-door meetings and private Facebook pages and groupchats! I love what I do, but I have watched this industry eat people alive and spit the bones out because they come into it not realizing how vicious the politics of respectability in it are, and how much work it really is. I don’t just sit around waiting for patients to come in; my current position is a lot cushier than my previous one but my stress is constantly through the roof and I burn out entirely for all personal passions outside of work several times a year. I can’t tell you how bad things get sometimes, and how much I have heard the same thing from literally every. other. optician. I. know. There’s a running joke in the industry that if you last a year it’ll never get its claws out of you. The joke is true. We’re trapped in a burning house. I just needed to yell about it somewhere.

[socialmediasocrates]

Spill the tea on luxottica

Luxottica is the fucking devil. They are a wicked, capricious megacorporation that gleefully led the optical industry into perdition and then peddled platitudes like they were going out of style about supporting small practices while fucking us sideways everywhere and every way they got a chance to. Fuck them, and here’s why:

Firstly, for the unaware, Luxottica (-Essilor, NATCH, MORE ABOUT THAT IN A MOMENT) is an Italian megacorporation. They own exclusive manufacturing rights to just about every luxury brand that you’ve ever heard of, and are one of four major frame manufacturers (the others are Safilo, another Italian megacorporation, Marchon-Altair, and Marcolin) but none of them are on level with Luxottica. As I am typing this, Luxottica owns:

-like I said, pretty much every high fashion luxury brand you’ve ever heard of, as well as Sunglass Hut -not just one optical retail chain, SEVERAL OF THEM. Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, Costco Optical, Sam’s Club Optical, Sear’s Optical, pretty much everywhere that’s not a private practice that accepts Eyemed is owned by Luxottica. Why? -THEY ALSO OWN EYEMED VISION INSURANCE. Eyemed is the second largest vision insurance in the entire fucking country. -Essilor? You know, largest manufacturer of eyeglass lenses? Creators of such iconic products as the Varilux progressive line, gold-standard anti-reflective coating line Crizal, the Eyezen anti-fatigue lens, that lovely anti-fogging coating that yeah, exists by the way! It has for years! YEAH THEY MERGED WITH THEM. THE NAME OF THE COMPANY IS ACTUALLY ESSILOR-LUXOTTICA.

So here’s the scenario. You spend a premium to have your Luxottica-brand vision insurance. You then take it to a Luxottica-brand retail chain, where you buy Luxottica-brand frames that are manufactured in a Luxottica-brand lab, and the payout from your insurance goes back to this Luxottica-brand retail chain. Which means that all of that money? YEAH IT STAYS WITHIN THE GENERAL CORPORATE STRUCTURE OF LUXOTTICA. FOREVER.

And Luxottica treats its employees like shit. Everyone that’s ever worked for any of their numerous retail chains can tell you how shady, unhelpful, uncooperative, and willing to fuck you over they are. It’s a shady, cut-throat, bloated behemoth of capitalistic excess that has found a way to turn itself into a perpetual money machine by directly incentivizing the people caught its web to just keeping spending their money within the structure of the corporation. They reinvented the company store, and they made it a vision insurance.

Louder, for the people in the back: 

FUCK LUXOTTICA.