They Work In Eye Care But They Cannot See

My eye doctor retired a couple of years ago, right around the time his practice stopped taking my insurance, anyway. As a result, I pushed my contact lenses to the limit, because finding a new eye doctor who would take my insurance was troublesome, and I initially wanted to go to a different practice. At last, however, my contacts are so old that I’m worried about damaging my eyes if I continue to wear them, or ripping them with no replacements, so I’m ready to bite the bullet and try a walk-in eye care center for the first time.

It’s late afternoon on Black Friday, and I’m desperate; this is the first time since the situation became dire that I have had any time to do this, and my mother agrees that we will go to the eye care center in the mall, since she has other shopping to do, anyway. We walk in. There are some other customers, but not a massive amount, and there is nobody at the reception desk in the middle of the room.

A young man in his late teens or early twenties comes by a minute later and greets us, but says he can’t do anything for us; he seems to be a low-level employee whose only job is cleaning. A woman stops by at last, and we explain that I need an eye exam to renew my prescription and will make an appointment if none are available for the rest of the day. She says she’ll be with us in a minute, tells us to take a seat, and proceeds to go over to a pair of customers who are looking at glasses and are extremely picky. That’s their prerogative, of course, but after waiting for fifteen minutes with every apparent employee focusing on various glasses customers when all we want is to make an appointment for later if the doctor can’t see us now, I insist that we leave, resigned to having to wait another few days until I had the time to try a different store on the other side of town.

As we are pulling out, I realize that there is a different eye care center in a strip mall right across the street! We walk in; there are three employees sitting behind the counter who greet us immediately, and have no problem squeezing me in for an appointment the next morning when they see how crestfallen I am that the first one they offer is too late in the afternoon, when I’ll already be at work. I have since had nothing but rapid, excellent, and affordable care from them.

If only the employees at the other eye care center had bothered to speak to us for two minutes, I’d be their new patient and customer, instead!

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