Is there a future for Opticianry? Will opticians unite, stand together so that future rules, technology and regulation do not place their livelihood in jeopardy? Will opticians continue to pathetically sleep while the optical world keeps moving forward and leaving them further behind? Will they stand by and watch more and more unlicensed staff do their work and wait too long so opticians become an expression instead of a career? Where do you see this field in 10 years?
I certainly would not encourage anyone to enter the field of ophthalmic dispensing today. The field has become diluted with retail clerks and commissioned salespeople. Third party payers and corporate interests define the rules that most of us operate under. I got out many years ago while the getting was good.
Don't hold your breath waiting for opticians to unite unless it is under the aegis of the large national chains and then the cooperation will be counter to the welfare of the craft. And, most independent opticians, if you can find any, can't see beyond their own door.
The profession is stagnant. I've seen it decline over the last 20 years. Largely due to OD dispensing, under-education and a complacent membership.
10 years from now? More of the same if you ask me.
The problem is, opticians are the only practitioners that don't have any exclusive area of practise.
Teeth? Dentists only.
Dental hygiene? Hygenists only.
Drugs? Pharmacists only.
Eye surgery? Ophthalmologists only.
Refraction? Optometrists only.
(Yes there are a few exceptions but they are not the rule.)
Compare that with eyewear.
Glasses? Opticians AND optometrists both do it en masse. And its not a level playing field.
As long as glasses are a money-maker for delegating optometrists, nothing will change.
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Originally Posted by Opticianjw
1. Not much.
2. No.
3. Probably.
4. They always have. Part-timers at WM have no vested interest in supporting a profession.
5. See: drugstores, gas stations, travel agents, etc...
Ophthalmic Optician, Society to Advance Opticianry
Sure they do Brother Johns!
They have a BLUE VESTED interest!
:cheers::cheers::cheers::cheers:
The future of opticians is grim. I wouldn't encourage anyone to get into the business at this stage. There are always a few exceptions but pay is the biggest factor. It doesn't matter if your working for a chain or a private practice, you will never make enough to be the sole supporter of a family.
I say this after having worked in the field for the last 15 years and watching the changes taking place. First of all, most states are not licensed and have very lax rules about who can perform the job. Secondly, an optician making 14-16 bucks an hour cannot afford to pay into any union. They can barely get by as it is.
If you work for a chain, your hours are not guaranteed and 30-35 is the most you can expect in a good week. The corporate profits will always come first. I always hear about how hard it is to find good people to work, where is the incentive for the good people to stay once they see the writing on the wall?
Bottom line, if you are a two income earner family and the optical field is the second income then come aboard. Otherwise, forget about it.
I own a few opticals that have provided my family and I an adequate living for a good number of years. Last year, my pre-teen son began to express an interest in the field, and mentioned that one day, he'd like to take the stores over.
I told him, "I'd rather you got involved in an enterprise that will afford you a better future. I don't think optical is it."
We then drove 11 hours to Vermont and I helped him pay for a hot-dog vendor's cart. He made $1,950 this summer, working two local festivals, a total of 8 days.
Ophthalmic Optician, Society to Advance Opticianry
I have gone to school for 3 years , have an abo and ncle and a state license in nevada. The state exam was pretty rigorous and i'm getting ready for advanced abo and ncle. Guess what i work for walmart and all of the people i work with have the same credentials or are on the way to achieving them. So i really take offense to some of the things said about opticians at wal-mart. It depends on the state the walmart vision center is in. Thats why it starts in the state legislatures to make all states licensed to weed out some of the people who want a job an not a career. In nevada its already happening any apprentice that isn't working toward state licensure is being eliminated and asked to pursue another profession. The retail vision industry has hurt the field we all know that/ when you tie profits to health care everyone loses/ this is true to all the health care professions. One thing for sure is people are getting older and living longer and that ensures our industry for a long time / so we need to look to improve the standards for all opticians across the board. WALMART ISN'T THE PROBLEM ITS A LOT BIGGER THANT US.
................there is also the major corporations behavior to include in the prognostic.
They openly support optometry as this is the main provider of prescriptions. This is the profession that is needed at least for now, or until there will be good reliable automatized instrumentation available.
The on line businesses are continuously growing with the help of a bad economy which will continue for a good while. As most of these products sold are made and finished in the far east, and local suppliers are loosing these sales.
So there is a trend these days that would, if it continues to progress, not only eliminate the optician as a profession, but also eliminate the optical retail industry as it exists now. There will be a few very specialized upscale ones left in existence.
I would give it about 10 years until some drastic changes have been made, but it could also happen sooner.
I agree completely. I encourage the young people I have been mentoring in the profession but to be honest, if they were my own kids I'd tell them to find something else to do with their life. I'm an old school optician that has been lucky enough to work for other old school optician/owners. If not for that I would not have been able to make a living. I am at the top of my pay scale but still don't make enough to support anymore than myself. I hope that the business I work for can survive the current economic disaster and give me ten more years because if I have to go out there and find another job it won't be a job like this one I would be willing to bet. This business is not what it was when I started 30 years ago and never will be again. Sad but true.
No, actually is depends on the "optician:.
I am also in a licensed state, and here the WM moto seems to be: "If 4 opticians are good, then 1 optician and three "stylists" are better"
Oh, and just as Marchon should be referred to as "Marchon/VSP", WM should be referred to as "WM/800-Contacts." After all, with this partnership, it reduces the need for having to have contact lens dispensers on staff.
I think it's great that you enjoy working for the employer you've chosen to identify yourself with. However, don't fool yourself into thinking that they, nor any of the other discount optical retailers have the optical profession's best interests in mind. It's just not reality...
Ophthalmic Optician, Society to Advance Opticianry
Same here. When asked by my daughter if she should do her High School internship in our Optometry office I quickly put her straight about that idea. She will be better served by choosing almost any of the other jobs they have to choose from. My son is learning all about what goes into operating the local sewage treatment plant and the money that can be made and it's security. Our proffession is being slowly but surely "flushed" down the tubes. I'd rather have my kids controlling the pipe's flow than being in it!!
I must have been mistaken when I thought this was where the good opticians congrgate. This bunch should be ashamed of themselves. To he ones who have reatired you left it worst off than you got it, don't talk just listen and get out of the way and let new blood take the reigns to maybe make change. To the ones that own multiple stores, your ignorance of your success is just plain foolish you've built an empire working hard and provideing value to your clients don't belittle the service you provide.
To the original poster as a member of your society when are you going to learn that opticians can shame themselves better than you can all day every day, your post provides no value or substance. Just a lot of garbage, why not explain what the NJ society is doing for it's members and why peopel should step up and belong. Take a page from the retail, large lens manufacture, and frame vendors talk about the value your product provides and what can be gained by joining.
My apologies if this post came off offensive I will continue to lurk quietly now.
First, JW I'm not trying to fly your thread to other places, but this very question has been on my mind. I've been doing a lot of assigned reading on aspherics and atorics this weekend. (I'm a student in a licensed state)
Is it true these lenses are not made anywhere in the US?
If not, why not?
Aspherics give superior vision, so will we soon be all aspherical all the time?
How quickly can we expect the lensometer to join the typewriter, the adding machine, the face clock in the antique museum??
Aspherics are tricky to adjust and if it isn't done perfectly, the glasses are useless. So all glasses fall out of adjustment periodically. Will opticians who can do excellent adjustments become a hot commodity? (By the way, there are very few out there who can do excellent adjustments!)
Opticianry as you know it may be fading fast, but there will always be new opportunities to make our place in whatever form the field takes. I have to believe that because I'm due to graduate soon and I want to work in this field very much!
Your spelling would have prevented your consideration. Is this what we should "stand aside" for? I will look for your posts in 20 years to see how you fare. Don't be offended, enthusiasm for your craft is a much needed quality and I applaud and wish you well. I will "lurk" while I see how the "reigns" feel in your capable hands.
The reason that I "reatired" from the craft in the mid eighties was primarily the fact that opticians were no longer getting any respect. The field was transitioning from that of a skilled craft to that of a retail clerk somewhat along the lines of a shoe salesman.
I graduated from one of the few two year dispensing opticiany schools in the sixties and was hired by an ethical Guild optician firm. Most opticians in Central Massachusetts were "ethical" in that none of the ophthalmologist dispensed and no opticians had "hired killers" independently cranking out Rx's next door or in the back room.
My starting salary was $325.0 a week which was actually worth $325.00 back in the sixties. My wife didn't have to work and was able to stay home and take care of the babies, iron my shirts and stir the sauce. Three months after graduation I was able to buy a nice home and a few months later bought a new Volvo. Frequent pay raises came my way as I mastered the craft and the goose hung high.
Most of my fellow graduates opened their own businesses within their first year and most did very well. A few of them are still around (or should I say surviving.) It was said back in those days that being an optician (or an optometrist) was l license to print money. I'm not too sure about that but it was good . . . real good. So good, in fact, that "big" business decided to put their snouts into the trough. The arrival of the chains brought some concern to the independents and the arrival of third party payers put everyone into a panic. Cripes, some states even tried to restrain this threat to their trade by actually licensing opticians, a ploy which had previously been implemented only as a means of regulating the number of individuals allowed to practice. Too late, the stakes were to high. So, we are where we are today because the independent ethical practitioners of the optical crafts sat on their butts back in the seventies and could not come together as the optometrists had twenty years earlier.
And today, the craft is even further fragmented. There are still a few master opticians and a few journeyman opticians but the majority of those working in ophthalmic optics today wouldn't make a pimple on an opticians latisibus.
I really wish that we could return to the good old days but just as a pickle will never return to being a cucumber . . . never happen GI.
At least that's the way I see it, or should I say, saw it.
.
Opticians who own their own store are very rare now days although there out there. The way to see this is that OD and MD's are generally self employed while opticians are employees. The more middlemen the less the salary, it pure and simple math. So if you are so concern about making money as an optician then the only thing left is to open your own store and chop the middlemen. It can be done. Do the math and you will see that if you open an optical store you will make more money than what you earn as an employee. I would go into more details here but frankly this is not the forum to place examples with real to date prices etc...This is still a good profession. I would not mind if one of my kids went to school to become an optician, but not as an employee of Wally or Dr. Cheapo but as an owner of their own store.
CNG
Not only are we among the best, but we are, in our anonymity, among the most honest.
The poster asked for opinions, and we gave honest opinions, based on our past experiences, and from the view we now have.
If you want someone to blow smoke up your skirt and paint a rosy picture of the profession, talk to someone else. Also, if you don't want the real answer, then don't ask the question.
If this was a terrible profession, and there was no money to be made in it, believe me, I not be sticking around. And yes, I stick by my statement that I would not be going into it today, knowing where the industry is headed.
Ophthalmic Optician, Society to Advance Opticianry
Bravo.
Very sad, but very true!
Opticians are their own worse enemy!
I work for a company that does not allow me to instal software on the computer I work, I am lucky to have internet access and I will not abuse the privledge by installing malware on the systems that I use to make money. If a good speller is what is necessary for leadership then we are doomed. Leadership encompasses more than just spelling, although your intentions are kind you may have either tempered the next great leader in our industry or convinced him not to step up. I won't ask you to step aside for me, I have nothing to offer you but this one story.
I used to work in an office where the manager had an MBA and the doctor was of coarse an OD, me with my lonely associates used to do all the writing in the office letters, adverts, etc. You care to take a guess why? The manager and the doctoir spent all of their time worrying about perfection in the documents they wrote. I used a tried an true method employed by many writers and professionals alike, care to take a stab at it? It's called a first draft, refinements are necessary in all writing (even posts) the goal of a writer is to put thought on paper, the goal of an editor is to refine that writing. So although both the doctor and the manager made great editors with their eye for perfection they lacked the skill to be writers.
If I may draw parralells(sp?) this industry is filled with good editors, I would love to see more writers. Let the creators create and let the critics be critics, thank you for being a critic many that respect you will no doubt ignore my few posts that follow, but those that can take and digest the post for something other than the faults that lie within hopefully can see the message, that's all.
We can still make a positive change, and despite the very real challenges we face, the time to get started in now. Please read the 7-part series in Eye Care Professional that I wrote last year (www.ECPmag.com). It may provide some additional insights. Leadership is needed, and does require excellent communication skills, both oral and written, as well as many other things. I look forward to this ongoing dialogue!
Your articles are very inspiring, if we could clone you our profession has a chance. I too see a future not yet written and look forward to writing it in our favor. Lot's of new and complex technology, I am of the belief that someone needs to know how this stuff works and at the moment no other profession is ready to take that responsibility as well as we can. Time to learn a new trade 20th century opticianry.
You always came off in your posts as a leader, and look where they will follow? I am teaching my son to be the next generation optician, will I hedge my bets, you betcha but this profession isn't dead yet and I can teach him to be the best so he'll always have a future.
I too have a son, and while he can read a lensometer, and run the 7E edger like it was a video game, I keep myself grounded in reality, and know that this is not a viable future for him.
I have taught him some optical skills as a way to supplement his allowance, and to help him pay for his high school. He knows what I pay, and knows what he can make in a weekend peddling hot dogs, and there's no comparison.
I sincerely think that by grooming him to take over the business, I would be holding him back from achieving his full potential. Is he learning about the business, payroll, COGs, and dealing with customers? You bet, but hopefully, it's preparing him more for bigger things than optical.
Don't parents always want better for their kids than they had? Knowing what you do about the direction of opticianry, why would you want your son to follow in your footsteps?
In terms of his future, I am not teaching him to be an optician, but to be a business person by taking advantage of what others don't see. Part of that process is by seeing trends and trying to figure out what they mean for the future of the profession, whatever profession it happens to be.
Ophthalmic Optician, Society to Advance Opticianry
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