Another fine mess
Since getting my new reading glasses a week ago, I've been plagued with blinding headaches. (This post will please those readers who came here by googling for "new glasses symptoms.") I established easily enough that the headaches came after wearing the new specs for any significant length of time, and so presumed that they must be somehow "wrong."
So I went back to the optician yesterday and asked her to test whether the glasses had been properly made. She disappeared into a back room for a while, then reported that they were indeed correct for the opthalmologist's prescription: works as designed. We talked about the glasses and about my circumstances for a while, then discovered the problem: wrong design.
What I have, is a pair of reading glasses.
What I need, is a pair of working glasses.
The difference is quite simple. Reading glasses are built to focus at a distance of around 40cm, e.g. the pages of a book that you hold in your hand. Your eyes converge on a point at that distance from your nose, and the lenses are so ground that the "centre" of vision is offset towards your nose by a small but significant amount.
Working glasses are built to focus at a distance of around 65cm, e.g. the computer monitor on your desk. Your eyes converge on a point farther away than for reading glasses so the offset is that much smaller, nearer to the true centre of the lens. (Long-distance lenses are ground with no offset at all, the centre of vision is dead ahead of each eye.)
We talked about this for a while, then she got out the toolkit and we worked out a set of lenses that would actually suit what I want: I'm getting a pair of bifocals for working use, ground for 60cm and 90cm. Fact of the day: bifocals are not cheap, each single lens costs more than both lenses plus frames of the first pair.
So I have a first pair of glasses that are useless to me (because I can read books perfectly well without them), and will soon have a second pair which I will hopefully be able to use.
I feel that I was badly advised in the first case: is it my job to know that there are two kinds of "reading glasses?" should I have known to specify the focussing distance in centimetres? To be fair this is a question of mismatched vocabulary. An optician lives in a world of glasses: reading glasses, driving glasses, sports glasses, diving glasses, long-distance glasses and indeed working glasses. The phrase "reading glasses" which is to me simply "the opposite of long-distance," is to him a very specific tool for a very specific circumstance. He should nonetheless have been aware of this possible mismatch and should have used a non-ambiguous term. (A similar case in architecture is when the client tells you to put the stove on the right side of the sink: you must be aware that in her context, "right" might mean "correct" which to her is the left side.)
The first optician neither exercised due care in asking the right questions, nor listened to what I did in fact tell him several times. I'm therefore inclined to say that the price of the second pair should be correspondingly reduced. We shall see.
Which brings us to public service announcement number four: When getting fitted up for glasses, dear reader, please be sure to explain exactly what you wish to do while wearing them, and ensure that the optician listens to and understands you. Do not use the phrase "reading glasses" (e.g. as a short-hand for "not long-distance") unless you really do mean "glasses to wear while reading a book that I hold in my hands."
In other news I have been remiss in replying to comments recently, due to
posted by Udge @ 10:27
7 Comments:
You have my sympathy. Before the summer I scheduled a checkup with my ophthalmologist and got a new prescription, because my vision had changed. I took the prescription with me to L.A. and went to Lenscrafters, where they have an enormous selection of frames, fill most prescriptions within an hour, relatively low prices, and a 30-day free exchange/return policy. One hour later I walked out with snazzy new frames, and glasses for distance only: the M.D. hadn't bothered to write a prescription for the reading lenses! A week later I returned and had a test with the optometrist: she found that even my distance prescription was wrong, laughed and told me that ophthalmologists are famously bad at prescribing glasses, apparently the world over. The new lenses, replaced according to her prescription, are just fine. Conclusion: things just don't go right the first time, but it's the only way to get to the second time.
Didn't you cross of the wrong part of that last sentence? Wouldn't the politically correct line be 'because of work'?
Joe: that's the difference between truth and political correctness!
Savtadotty: 30-day refund or exchange? within the hour?? sounds like paradise to me. Mine will take a week (meaning, probably not ready before my flight) and are on the East German plan: if you're not happy with them, tough.
Philip: thanks. I can in fact see well enough with the first pair if I get up close to the screen (and then turn the brightness way down). But this just substitutes a pain in the neck for a headache.
sorry to hear about the glasses - nie isses richtig, hope this gets sorted soon, sounds so typically fussy - fussily german...anyway I did the bookthing and yes, Nietzsche is really punk. De Gruyter is the best edition. For a start of Herr N discussion and to wake you from mental inertia, which of his texts you like best?
Ouch. That would be irritating, both headaches and paying for glasses that won't help you. I agree with you, by the way, if it is such a specific product, I would think that he would have asked more specific questions.
When I got my last pair of glasses, I told him that I was having headaches and I was sure it was because of my prescription changing. I was very shocked to find out that a) it hadn't changed at all and b) he actually told me that I didn't need new glasses. I had never had an optometrist try to talk me out of glasses before (well, except for when I decided I absolutely must have the octogon shaped glasses in 4th grade). I ended up getting the glasses anyway and the headaches stopped. We think it might have been because the old ones were so scratched up, it was hurting me to look through them.
That seems like a nice metaphor for much of life ? going for the solution before clarifying the problem. In a more general and an all-too-common form, it goes something like, "I think I have a problem. Aha! More money will fix it." Yet, I find that sometimes just trying to understand what I'm uneasy about is enough ... I was going to say, "to fix it," but maybe I'll just leave it with "enough." Fixing it sometimes doesn't solve the problem (although in the case of your glasses, I do hope it does).
Best of luck with the new glasses (and the wrangling over their price).
You are absolutely correct to think this is the optician's responsibility. A quick question over the intended use would have corrected the problem and saved you some money. I would definitely ask about a reduced price. You won't know if you can get a reduction unless you ask!
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