u/PhrygianSounds

Im starting an apprenticeship in a big box retail optical center and there is no optical lab on site. How am I supposed to learn what all the tools, lensometer and other machines are if I don’t have access to a lab? Our store is just retail. So we have like a frame heater and some hand tools to tighten frames for adjustments but that’s about it

I just started my apprenticeship and I will be licensed in hopefully two years. I just moved to a licensed state because my partner is doing grad school here and I thought it would be the perfect time to do my apprenticeship.

The only thing is that I’m not sure I will live here for a long time. Plans always change of course, but I imagine I’ll probably move back home to be close to family in a couple of years. They live in Kansas, an unlicensed state. So if I moved to Kansas sometime after getting licensed, would I make just as much as an unlicensed optician?

I’m an optician apprentice and I had a patient today who had this contact lens prescription:

OD: Plano, -1.75 x 130

OS: -0.50

Her mom kept asking me “How is there an astigmatism but no power in the right eye? This is the second eyecare center we’ve been to that has told us this and it seems wrong“

So I explained how she has simple myopic astigmatism in the right eye meaning some of the light reaches the retina but the rest doesn’t, and she looked super confused.

In case this happens again is there a better way to explain it anatomically? Like how does the unique shape of her cornea allow some light to hit the retina but some to not reach far enough?

Finally some media coverage on probably the worst symptom of long covid

I’ve gained 60 lbs over the years due to lack of activity, can’t exercise, and eating too much takeout. I need to lose the weight because it’s making my health worse. I have sleep apnea now and hypertension that I know is related.

Every time I try just a simple 500 calorie deficit, my body treats it like starvation and as a physiological stressor, it causes me to crash. My tinnitus becomes unbearable, I get diarrhea, worsening DPDR and anhedonia, more fatigue. So how am I supposed to lose this weight?

I am an optician apprentice and I help a lot of contact lens patients in our office after their eye exams. Oftentimes when I get a new presbyopia patient try on contacts with a monovision prescription, they complain that they can read just fine but distance is still blurry. So they insist on getting it rechecked with the optometrist, but almost every time the optometrist just tells them “You’ll get used to it”.

So instead of having them go back to get a recheck and back up our patient flow, I want to be able to explain to them how and why it works and see if that helps. This happens with multifocal contact lens patients as well, but not as often as monovision.

I’m only 2 months into this career and already pretty invested, studying for my exams while learning on the job. I do love learning and helping people, but I’m just absolutely drowning at my job.

We have on average 70 patients per day and that’s not including walk-ins. Some patients wait over an hour just to order contacts and then I still have to do my shitty annual supply sales pitch. I hate when I get backed up because one patient can’t make up their mind on frames, and next thing you know I have a line forming and patients get angry and take it out on me.

I already want to maybe try working in a smaller environment, like a Sam’s Club optical department or something. Has this happened to anyone and does changing environments make the job more tolerable?

It's been almost four years. I recovered in year two, only to fall back down and have been suffering ever since. During recovery, I got almost everything back in my life that I had lost, and then lost it all again. And since then, I've slowly been getting those things back again but this time while sick, and it's been incredibly difficult.

I used to always have options. If I couldn't work, I'd live with my mom. If I couldn't pay my bills, my mom would pay me to work on online projects for her insurance business. I didn't need to worry about health insurance because I could use my Dad's. Now, all of those options are gone. My mom moved in with her boyfriend and his kid, and there's no room for me. I turned 26 and lost my health insurance. So I had to get my own place and my own full-time job.

It's been a few months now, and basically being independent again is lowering my baseline and I am panicking because I don't have options if this fails. I don't have family to stay with. I can't get back on my Dad's health insurance. Just wondering if anyone else is in the same situation or something similar, where you have responsibilities that are non-negotiable and have to do them. What the hell are we supposed to do?

I’m new to opticianry and when I get new multifocal wearers, they’re always about what’s cheapest vs what’s best for their own prescription and lifestyle.

Twice now I’ve had patients with higher prescriptions deny high index due to cost, but I’ve been taught that it poses many problems for these types of patients to not have high index with progressives.

So chances are they might end up returning them. How do I educated and convince them that it’s very necessary and that I’m not just trying to upsell them

This condition (for me at least) is so sensitive to mental and physiological stress. If I’m stressing over finances, I crash. If I’m stub my toe, I crash. If I try to diet and lose all of the weight I’ve gained over the years, I crash. Anything that my body registers as stress, causes my symptoms to become worse. And what’s annoying is that I can’t make progress in any areas of my life because fixing things requires effort, which is.. stress

When I had a better baseline in 2023, I could tolerate stress. It seems like the lower the baseline, the lower the threshold is. I feel like I need like a hard reset on my nervous system. Like a several month long retreat on a beach where I have zero responsibilities, except relaxing and resting.

My sister lives near the beach in Rhode Island. Although it’s not the nicest beach, I’m seriously considering going on FMLA and spending a few months with her and just letting my body and nervous system actually heal. I think stress is just the biggest obstacle

It finally struck me recently that no one cares!

I try to put myself in other’s shoes for some perspective. How much time do I spend thinking about my co-workers or my friends? Literally no more than a few seconds at a time, if at all. And I imagine it’s the same for me. Nobody thinks about what shirt I’m wearing, or what color shoes, or if my hair is too long.

Even though I realize this, I still spend an hour on my appearance every day before work. I still over analyze how I talk and sound to others. How do I end this?

Idk if this is just something to do with the particular location, or maybe it’s supposed to be like this but almost every time I order a medium concrete mixer, it’s always 3/4 full. Only sometimes will the cup be all the way full.

I usually don’t say anything about it because I don’t wanna be that guy, but it gets to a point where I feel like I’m wasting my money.

The place I work at has their own courses for ABO/NCLE exam prep that you can take and then they reimburse you later. But I’ve heard that the Laramy K and/or Optician Works courses are the best, and I also would like to study at my own pace, so should I just do one of those programs instead?

I‘m an introvert and I have social anxiety especially with strangers. I am an optician (I help people purchase glasses & contacts and help repair them as well), and I see around 20 customers a day.

Every time I sit down with a customer, I get nervous. I tense up, my jaw clenches, and I subconsciously rehearse every word that comes out of my mouth. When the customer leaves, I feel all of the tension just melt off of me. I’ve always felt like this with strangers my entire life. When it’s with family or friends I feel completely fine.

Does anyone have advice? I love everything else about my career so I’d really like to fix this if possible

I’m a beginner in this field and I have to watch my stress levels because of a health condition I have. Aside from the stress, I do really like this career and it’s the first time in my life where I’m happy with my career choice. I just need to find ways to manage the stress

Most of the stress comes from things that are out of my control like our super slow computers, front desk employees messing up patient profiles, or having patients backed up because of staffing shortage.

But I also find that anytime I have a patient/customer, no matter the circumstances, I tense up. Even if things are going smoothly, and that tension doesn’t drop until the minute they leave. It’s like I’m nervous to mess up or have them dissatisfied in any way and it puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on me

I have to work full time unfortunately and I’ll explain why. I just turned 26, and got kicked off of my parents health insurance. Only full time jobs give health insurance to employees. I also cannot afford to live only working part time.

Previously, I was working as an administrative assistant part time. This worked for me temporarily because I didn’t need my own health insurance, and I was living with my mom, so I didn’t need money for rent. I was able to work and maintain my baseline.

Then I turned 26, and lost my health insurance and got kicked out because my mom wanted to move in with her boyfriend. So now I had no choice but to push through working a new full time job and live on my own. It’s been 1.5 months so far, and I’m struggling. I’m feeling my baseline lower and it’s scaring me. My job is not physical whatsoever, but training has been frying my brain. Whenever I have to study or retain new information, my nervous system treats it as a threat and I get worse symptoms. I woke up a few days ago and couldn’t remember where I was for a few minutes which has never happened before, and I fully attribute it to the constant mental strain of training I’ve been doing.

My only alternative would‘ve been a job that is easy to learn and repetitive, like warehouse jobs or stocking at a grocery store, but I cannot handle physical jobs in any capacity. I tried that early on and ended up in the hospital a few times.

If anyone is in the same boat and has found ways to manage this condition while working full time please share some tips

I’ve had this robotic, monotone mumbling voice my entire life and I’m sick of it. I think it stems from my social anxiety because I tend to talk faster because my brain wants conversations to end as soon as possible, especially with strangers like at my customer facing job.

But whenever I try to fix it by talking slower, with enunciation and more inflection, it sounds like I’m an actor in a play or something. How do I make it sound like I’m not trying?