Biggest mistake you've made...

[Florida Optician]

1. Accidently purchasing ether instead of acetone-at the time you could buy right off the shelf and they were packaged exactly the same ( can with white and blue lettering) -so with the small work area,we both almost passed out from the fumes. I was the young apprentice and the older optician was not happy .... when she recovered.
2. Asking the quite elderly man who was picking out new eyewear if his daughter approved of his selection-yep it was his lovely young wife.
3.Probably too many others to remember-have been in this biz since 1976-the good thing is you usually only make these kind of mistakes once!!

The other angle- I routinely call optical chain stores to check prices and in general find out what they are telling folks-it is fun to act like you don't know what you are talking about.The funniest thing told to me by an "optician" that they did not carry the lens Pandamic-I even had him spell it because I was so surprised.

[Grubendol]

The other angle- I routinely call optical chain stores to check prices and in general find out what they are telling folks-it is fun to act like you don't know what you are talking about.The funniest thing told to me by an "optician" that they did not carry the lens Pandamic-I even had him spell it because I was so surprised.

I hope they don't carry a lens that could lead to worldwide extinction! :drop:

[Ory]

The funniest thing told to me by an "optician" that they did not carry the lens Pandamic-I even had him spell it because I was so surprised.

These lenses are very popular with the bear segment of the market.:hammer:

[Jubilee]

These lenses are very popular with the bear segment of the market.:hammer:

Their Short corridor lens? (Pandamic):cheers:

[Steelerfan]

I think my personal best was in my first year (1989) while heating up an old cat eye frame with rhinestones in the salt pan too long for an elderly female customer. Every stone fell off the front of the frame. After sifting through the kosher salt and finding the stones, I painstakingly tried to reglue them on with superglue. Proudly carrying them out of the lab with two hands as if nothing had happened, I went to put the frame on her head. At that point I realized my fingers were stuck to the frame!!! "That's not quite right yet" I quipped and marched back into the lab to try and unglue my fingers from the frames with acetone. Ahhhh... good times your first year in the biz.

:cheers:

[optigrrl]

I think that was the best Oops! story ever!!!!

Nice recovery!

ROFLOL!!!!!

[Jubilee]

I too have been a victim of the salt pan. Nothing like doing an adjustment in front of the patient, and having their very expensive frame shriveling up in to a little ball of plastic...

Though it was also disgusting the one night somone had place polarized lenses in our chem treat holder. So you guessed it.. Time to drop them in, and we had a massive smoke cloud drifting through the lab. To make it worse, that was when I was working for LC so we had windows lining the walls so the lab was visible to both the regular mall traffic, and those inside the store as well. Talking about some attention!!!

Cassandra

[optigrrl]

Cassandra, I can just picture it! *POOF* and up goes the lab! LOL!

[chip anderson]

Ever wonder why no one told you not to put high index lenses in the salt pan? We all had to learn the hard way.

Chip

[rainchild]

I was doing a progressive seg height measurement on this really sweet old lady (90 if she was a day) I was using the old mark the cull with a marker technique but when i switched from the right to the left, I didn't pull my hand back far enough and drew a black line right across the bridge of her nose! She was really nice about it...but I'm sure she had traces of that line for a couple of days!:o

[loncoa]

A coworker would measure progressive lens heights by dotting them on the demo lens with a marker. Until one day he didn't notice there was no demo lens on one side...TOINK! Right in the centre of the pupil though...I wish I could describe the scene which followed but I cannot find the words...

[JG43]

I have had many many many embarrassing moments in my seven years in the optical field! One comes to mind as the most embarrassing in front of a customer! about a year or two into my career I was showing frames to a man who was helping this older lady pick out glasses I assumed they were mother and son and in the course of presenting the frames I made said the words "You're mother glasses" to the man. He looked at me and said, "This is my wife!" I apologized a few times! I was so red in the face and felt I was going to die!!

[Striderswife]

This is an old thread, but still funny.

One thing that sticks in my mind happened probably 10 years ago. I went to put a pair of glasses on a pt's face, and the nosepads went up his nose! Now, I let the patients put on their own glasses. :P

[DragonLensmanWV]

Heh, I let the customers put the frames on themselves after I put a pair on a lady, and the temple caught her wig and pulled it off.:hammer:

[Fezz]

Heh, I let the customers put the frames on themselves after I put a pair on a lady, and the temple caught her wig and pulled it off.:hammer:

LOL!!

That is a tough one to recover from!

[NCspecs]

So glad this thread has been resurrected!

I've got one:

When I first started in a lab I was fresh out of high school and really eager to please. We had a gentleman come in for his progressives and they still had the ink from the lab on the lenses. One of the Opticians stuck her head in the lab and asked for his tray and so, trying to be one step ahead, I tried to clean his poly lenses with acetone. After my lab manager saw what I had done she ordered me to go out to the gentleman and apologize for screwing up his glasses. I dutifully marched out of the lab (scared as hell) but when I came face to face with the customer I burst into tears (Hey, I was barely 18). He ended up giving me a hug and saying, "If this is the worst thing that happens to me all day I'll be okay." He was so nice but it embarrasses me still to this day.

[optilady1]

This only happened about 4 years ago. A job had FINALLY come in, and the patient stopped in to get it right as my delivery service dropped it off. I quickly inspect, and get my panties in a bunch because there was 3 diopters vertical inbalance. I'm fuming, and go explain very appologetically to the man, that the lab again made a mistake. He's super nice, a very laid back guy, and leaves. i punch the numbers in on phone to call the lab, getting ready to talk to the head dude in charge, when I look at the actual order, and see that the Doctor prescribed the prism. Feeling like a humbled jerk, I ran out to the parking lot to try and find him, but he had already driven away. I called and left him a message, telling him I was an idiot, and he was ok about it. Made me feel like a real dummy though.

[icmor]

Not mine, but my co-worker took a lot of ribbing for this one: As she was preparing to teach a customer who had one arm how to insert and remove their new contact lenses, she asked him, "Are you right or left handed?" Later on, we asked her if his nickname "Lefty" was a giveaway to that answer!

[Dave Metzger]

where to start, hmmmmmm

worked at a union clinic, 4 women named Maria Scrivanich ordered glasess the same day. Of course I mixed them all up, but only one complained.

Edged a pr of progressives as occupational lenses, oops I mean upside down. Don't ask!

Sold a replacement metal frame. Left the broken frame so instead of throwing them in the trash I pretzelised them into a nice little sculpture. 15 minutes later he returned to ask for the old frames back.

Least but not last!

Woman comes in for an exam. I told her my shop sold rx eyewear and I did NOT examine eyes. After she insisted twice that I did I told her to remove her clothes and go into the back . I caught hell for that one, glad it was in 1981 and not 2010

[JAMRHAMR]

I will share two. The first one happened when I was dispensing a pair if glasses to a lady. She wanted the frame to sit even on her face, so I went back to adjust them, came back and she tried them on and liked the fit. Then she laid them on the table and noticed that one temple was off the table. I told her that her ears were uneven and that is why I had to pull one temple up. She got so mad at me that she made me blush! She told me that she was not uneven and to make the glasses straight. So I made them straight on the table and let her walk out thew door with them crooked on her face. The second was I was demonstrating a Flexon frame to a patient and it snapped right at the bridge! So much for durability!

[Uncle Fester]

I told this somewhere else on OB but anyway-

I accidentally put a pair of CR-39 into the single pair Kirk glass tempering kiln.

Yeah- They caught fire so thinking fast I dial the timer to cool and they slid out before melting into the unit. The problem was they were still aflame so I leaned down and tried to blow them out.

(BIG mistake)

Blowing on the lenses with the hot kiln chamber behind them turned a small fire into a large fireball!








































































Eventually my eyebrows grew back.:hammer:



Lesson learned- Always--Always-- Always blow from the side!:bbg:

[DragonLensmanWV]

So you really ended up looking like Uncle Fester!!

[Uncle Fester]

Exactly!

P.S. The trains are in the attic.

[Striderswife]

The second was I was demonstrating a Flexon frame to a patient and it snapped right at the bridge! So much for durability!

I've had it happen to me, too. How embarrassing is that??

[paulcr39]

When learning to edge nearly 30 years ago the lab guy teaching me never explained flipping the pattern to make the opposite eye. After 19 trays with right lenses spot on and 19 left lenses with the wrong shape he discovered "my" error. :hammer:

In the mid 1990's while trouble shooting an order in an ophthalmolgist's office for a guy that was a real 'lower alimentary canal exit port' I got caught giving him the bird under the table by his wife who was sitting in the waiting room. :finger: