I Love what I do! But....

[carl.lawrence1990]

I Love working in the Lab, I work for a pretty well known chain. However I am barely even making enough money to survive. I am getting paid $10/hr and my incentives aren't all that much because I live in a smaller town and I usually do about 10 - 15 jobs a day. I feel like my position is crucial for this company (of course everyones is) but I feel like I am EXTREMELY underpaid for the amount of work that I do and the skills and knowledge I have. I just want to know what I can do, or where I can go to where I can actually get paid a livable wage, Im 26, not 18. My 17 year old niece works at Hollister in the mall and makes almost as much as I do, to me this is insulting.

[Chris Ryser]

I just want to know what I can do, or where I can go to where I can actually get paid a livable wage, Im 26, not 18. My 17 year old niece works at Hollister in the mall and makes almost as much as I do, to me this is insulting.

At 26 and working for a major chain you are a classified lab employee and paid like all of them.

Find out what the others make in sales, you could be good at that with a few years of lab experience if the pay is better.

If that does not work out start a union withing the chain and press for a higher pay.

The next solution is to look for another job at some independent optician before quitting.

[Kujiradesu]

I always tell people to get licensed, but I dont know if Louisiana even has licensure. If you work for the chain that I think you do, their labs are an increasingly unimportant part of their business. No matter what anyone says just look at how much work is being sent to the central labs. Its easy to foresee a future where only edging is done in the store, or regions have one lab for all their stores, or store labs are done away with altogether.If you want to make more money and dont want to leave the company try to get transferred to a high volume store. At the very least your spiff will be better.

[GrahamEye]

I Love working in the Lab, I work for a pretty well known chain. However I am barely even making enough money to survive. I am getting paid $10/hr and my incentives aren't all that much because I live in a smaller town and I usually do about 10 - 15 jobs a day. I feel like my position is crucial for this company (of course everyones is) but I feel like I am EXTREMELY underpaid for the amount of work that I do and the skills and knowledge I have. I just want to know what I can do, or where I can go to where I can actually get paid a livable wage, Im 26, not 18. My 17 year old niece works at Hollister in the mall and makes almost as much as I do, to me this is insulting.

I started the same way around the same age with my optical career. I started at a Lenscrafters lab as part time, moved to fulltime, and then started working on the sales floor after reaching the cap for the lab (without becoming a manager). I worked towards my ABO and put in hours on the floor and the lab. Even after getting the ABO, there wasn't a huge pay increase (again, Lenscrafters). However, it opened up an opportunity to work as an optician at a private office where pay increased. The road is long, and you must be patient, before you will get that pay rate you feel you deserve and equals your skills. From start to now, I have been in the field for 10 years. Recently, I have been feeling that "cap" again with my skills and pay from where I am in the optical field; but that means I must improve and learn in order to be better to be worthy of any pay increase. I am no stellar optician and I am still learning a lot, but I like what I do and will keep moving forward (whether within or outside the optical field).

[optical24/7]

I've posted this a few time, but I'll do it again for the new eyes here...

When ask why he robed banks, Jesse James answered "Because that's where the money is." Just like most fields of employment, relocation may be nessesary to advance in pay and position. I had eight different labs under my belt by my tenth year. I learned a lot at each position I held and was able to command a higher salary as I moved.

I traveled to Corpus Christi to interview for GM of a wholesaler. I found they had employees with them 15-20 years, all making a few dimes over minimum wage. I asked the owner how he could keep employees so long at such low salaries. He said, "I've got the only lab in town. These people would never move away from their families." He had them by the gonads and knew it. ( His offer to me was insulting )

Though not always easy, look for employment at an MD location. The hours and pay tend to be better. Good luck in the future!

[rbaker]

If you were my grandson I would strongly urge you to return to school and educate yourself into a real job. Science or engineering or anything in the medical field. Jeesh, even a teaching degree. If you are not into the formal education thingy consider one of the trades. Plumbers, electricians and auto mechanics make a lot more than 95% of the people laboring in the eye glass business. Consider getting a "government" job with all them benefits.

[Hayde]

Ditto to what's been shared here. If you don't want to climb the managerial ladder of your chain, then polish those shoes and find a doc. Commit to ABO certification if you're not already. Lab sense will get you far, but people skills are just as important to improving your earning potential in eye care. If you love learning and branching your knowledge wide as well as deep, this is still a great industry that'll keep you fed. It can feed you well, but like George said, you gotta go hit the pavement and look. Willingness to relocation to growing population centers is a huge advantage. Be prepared to do a lot of cost-of-living variable math, but when you do you'll still spot some winning lillipads to consider your jump.

A lot of hirers were in your shoes once. (I know I was.) And we're always looking....

[Paul Smith LDO]

I'm reminded of a song, from someone in your neck of the woods; Dr John, Right Place Wrong Time. Ah, to be 26 again. You're a young man and there are many career paths you can go down. If you don't like your situation, change it. If you like what you do get some damn education and don't stop at ABO. Get on a steam liner, sail the world. Take up gator hunting and join the cast of Swamp People. Learn how to make beer and become a Brewmaster. Bottom line, if you're going to be a Bear in the woods, it's best to be a Grizzly.

[David_Garza]

I Love working in the Lab, I work for a pretty well known chain. However I am barely even making enough money to survive. I am getting paid $10/hr and my incentives aren't all that much because I live in a smaller town and I usually do about 10 - 15 jobs a day. I feel like my position is crucial for this company (of course everyones is) but I feel like I am EXTREMELY underpaid for the amount of work that I do and the skills and knowledge I have.

10-15 jobs a day is pretty small work load, if you work FT 40 hrs a week that's really not a huge workload. I could see where you would feel underpaid if you were doing 2-3X more workload. Have you gone out to seek a better lab position where your knowledge and skills will be better utilized and therefore require an increase in pay. In the end a mall job is still a mall job.

[ml43]

I've posted this a few time, but I'll do it again for the new eyes here...

When ask why he robed banks, Jesse James answered "Because that's where the money is." Just like most fields of employment, relocation may be nessesary to advance in pay and position. I had eight different labs under my belt by my tenth year. I learned a lot at each position I held and was able to command a higher salary as I moved.

I traveled to Corpus Christi to interview for GM of a wholesaler. I found they had employees with them 15-20 years, all making a few dimes over minimum wage. I asked the owner how he could keep employees so long at such low salaries. He said, "I've got the only lab in town. These people would never move away from their families." He had them by the gonads and knew it. ( His offer to me was insulting )

Though not always easy, look for employment at an MD location. The hours and pay tend to be better. Good luck in the future!

agreed on every point.

Started in the lab as well, worked at one location till I maxed out on both experience and pay, then moved.

if you aren't tied down to location or company, move.

Only thing I would add is network.
Meet people in the area/industry, get your name out there, review your resume, find out what it would take to move up. Be it education, skills, abilities, etc...

[rbaker]

When ask why he robed banks, Jesse James answered "Because that's where the money is."

It was good old Willy Sutton who is credited with that statement although he later denied it in his autobiography.

[pknsbeans]

Only thing I would add is network.
Meet people in the area/industry, get your name out there, review your resume, find out what it would take to move up. Be it education, skills, abilities, etc...

It surprised me to see how many in the field transition. Some go from opticianry to frame or lab representative. Those are only the ones I meet. I'm sure others are happy in their position and others yet move to other positions. Networking helps. You can move up, you just need to move. There's a lot of different positions in this field. Getting your feet wet in the lab could lead to other opportunities. You just need to be open.

[DanLiv]

Lab work and opticianry (at chain store levels) are very different jobs. Telling him to get ABO and move to sales is basically telling him to get a completely different job. Lab is severely limited in any chain optical, but I understand the enjoyment I did it at LC for years too. What I thought about but never tried is going to work for a wholesale lab. You get the enjoyment of making eyewear (though get ready for a shocker in the volume they will expect), don't need the gamut of optician skills, and I'm sure will make more than you are now. Plus a lot more room for growth in many areas within a wholesale lab company. And though some might consider the lowest levels "unskilled" labor, I've been to several labs and lots of employees have been there a long time and enjoy it (and they aren't the only lab in town, I'm in Denver where we have a dozen labs).

No matter how critical you think you are to the organization, they will never share that view. I thought the same thing about my time there. When I left there wasn't the slightest blip in their numbers. I thought I was the shiniest cog in their machine. Turns out any grubby old cog could churn out their level of mediocrity as well as I could.

[Paul Smith LDO]

I Love working in the Lab, I work for a pretty well known chain. However I am barely even making enough money to survive. I am getting paid $10/hr and my incentives aren't all that much because I live in a smaller town and I usually do about 10 - 15 jobs a day. I feel like my position is crucial for this company (of course everyones is) but I feel like I am EXTREMELY underpaid for the amount of work that I do and the skills and knowledge I have. I just want to know what I can do, or where I can go to where I can actually get paid a livable wage, Im 26, not 18. My 17 year old niece works at Hollister in the mall and makes almost as much as I do, to me this is insulting.

Skill sets and knowledge can be evaluated and tested. Again, if this is the field you are firm on staying in get yourself some education and advanced certification.

[optical24/7]

Lab work and opticianry (at chain store levels) are very different jobs. Telling him to get ABO and move to sales is basically telling him to get a completely different job. Lab is severely limited in any chain optical, but I understand the enjoyment I did it at LC for years too. What I thought about but never tried is going to work for a wholesale lab. You get the enjoyment of making eyewear (though get ready for a shocker in the volume they will expect), don't need the gamut of optician skills, and I'm sure will make more than you are now. Plus a lot more room for growth in many areas within a wholesale lab company. And though some might consider the lowest levels "unskilled" labor, I've been to several labs and lots of employees have been there a long time and enjoy it (and they aren't the only lab in town, I'm in Denver where we have a dozen labs).

No matter how critical you think you are to the organization, they will never share that view. I thought the same thing about my time there. When I left there wasn't the slightest blip in their numbers. I thought I was the shiniest cog in their machine. Turns out any grubby old cog could churn out their level of mediocrity as well as I could.

Wholesale lab skills and pay may have drastically changed since I was in wholesale. When I was in it only chief's made any kind of money, Indians made squat. Retail sales paid more, hence my move to retail.

[Paul Smith LDO]

Dan, I would agree with your statement in that lab and opticianry can vary greatly. I do how ever see that a lab tech can make a smooth transition into opticianry. Your lab tech understands some basic decentration/OC and it's placement along with some information concerning lens materials and their appropriate usage for frame styles and prescriptions, as well as, lens coatings and treatments. The trick is to package these assets along with education and wrap it into a well polished Optician. We have all seen this scenario, OD needs frame sales person. OD asks the cute barista behind the counter of SB if they would considered work in the exciting field of optical and they can teach them everything they will need to know. At the end of 4 years the barista/optician can answer the phone, bill insurance, take a PD and make the coffee for the office. I am surrounded by offices filled with frame sales people who can't demonstrate basic dispensing skills but they are cute and they can make a solid espresso.

[rbaker]

In most cases the craft of opticianry has morphed into two separate jobs, lab rats and salespersons. I guess that is the natural progression of the eyeglass business; the transition from a skilled craft to a retail sweat shop job.

[DanLiv]

Dan, I would agree with your statement in that lab and opticianry can vary greatly. I do how ever see that a lab tech can make a smooth transition into opticianry. Your lab tech understands some basic decentration/OC and it's placement along with some information concerning lens materials and their appropriate usage for frame styles and prescriptions, as well as, lens coatings and treatments. The trick is to package these assets along with education and wrap it into a well polished Optician. We have all seen this scenario, OD needs frame sales person. OD asks the cute barista behind the counter of SB if they would considered work in the exciting field of optical and they can teach them everything they will need to know. At the end of 4 years the barista/optician can answer the phone, bill insurance, take a PD and make the coffee for the office. I am surrounded by offices filled with frame sales people who can't demonstrate basic dispensing skills but they are cute and they can make a solid espresso.

TOTALLY agree Paul. Many "opticians", retail AND optometry, are an embarrassment to the title. And an awesome way to turn a "frame stylist" or lab technician into an optician is cross training into the other realm. Optical salespeople have a hard time understanding the ramifications of what they do without the lab knowledge, and lab technicians often don't understand why they are doing what they are doing without the dispensing knowledge. The best is of course both.

However, if lab is really what the OP loves best, he's going to lose a lot of that kind of work by becoming an optician. I feel that's a lot more customer-facing work than lab work.

[Paul Smith LDO]

Could not agree more. I used to do both and found it irritating that the staff was so divided between optical and lab. My non lab opticians had a hard time with calculating edge thickness created by Rx, decentration, and lens material, so they handed them off to me. So many of them refused to cross train or to continue their education after passing the boards, further distancing the ECP from the Artisan. I am a proponent of education and feel it has a important place in our industry, even if one spends 40 years in the lab. Having an ABOM is only going to add to the OP's credibility and expand their understanding of optical principles.

[Uncle Fester]

In most cases the craft of opticianry has morphed into two separate jobs, lab rats and salespersons. I guess that is the natural progression of the eyeglass business; the transition from a skilled craft to a retail sweat shop job.

Not counting how automation's role in the whole process is creating a new paradigm.

Your post #6 is spot on for a 26 year old!!!

[mervinek]

Once a lab nerd...ALWAYS a lab nerd. The best ones get ABO certified and do both. Being an optician with lab experience makes you more marketable. I would say... get certified and then get as much experience in as many locations as you can. Having that lab experience helps you to sell/ fit better glasses and patients will love you for it too. Then you will have higher sales. There is a big difference between someone who has extensive lab and lens knowledge than someone who is just retail.

[smallworld]

Dan, I would agree with your statement in that lab and opticianry can vary greatly. I do how ever see that a lab tech can make a smooth transition into opticianry. Your lab tech understands some basic decentration/OC and it's placement along with some information concerning lens materials and their appropriate usage for frame styles and prescriptions, as well as, lens coatings and treatments. The trick is to package these assets along with education and wrap it into a well polished Optician. We have all seen this scenario, OD needs frame sales person. OD asks the cute barista behind the counter of SB if they would considered work in the exciting field of optical and they can teach them everything they will need to know. At the end of 4 years the barista/optician can answer the phone, bill insurance, take a PD and make the coffee for the office. I am surrounded by offices filled with frame sales people who can't demonstrate basic dispensing skills but they are cute and they can make a solid espresso.

Are you saying only unattractive people are good at learning optical skills? Ouch!

[Hayde]

Once a lab nerd...ALWAYS a lab nerd. The best ones get ABO certified and do both. Being an optician with lab experience makes you more marketable. I would say... get certified and then get as much experience in as many locations as you can. Having that lab experience helps you to sell/ fit better glasses and patients will love you for it too. Then you will have higher sales. There is a big difference between someone who has extensive lab and lens knowledge than someone who is just retail.

Could not agree more. I used to do both and found it irritating that the staff was so divided between optical and lab. My non lab opticians had a hard time with calculating edge thickness created by Rx, decentration, and lens material, so they handed them off to me. So many of them refused to cross train or to continue their education after passing the boards, further distancing the ECP from the Artisan. I am a proponent of education and feel it has a important place in our industry, even if one spends 40 years in the lab. Having an ABOM is only going to add to the OP's credibility and expand their understanding of optical principles.

Absolutely! And to an arguably lesser extent, dispensing/patient care skills feed back into the lab. Granted, getting ABO and moving out of the lab is "a different job," but that's pretty much a given for Big Boxer wanting more money. Since money is the OP objective (and assuming loving what you do is about loving optics instead of working in a customerless room where you can blare your music too loud,) then owning more corners of eye care competency is essential to standing out among a sea of people who can just operate an edger. Wading into those 'different jobs' is darn good advise to moving up the ladder in a lab somewhere. Regardless of which side you climb up, ultimately it's a management job in higher rungs. (I would imagine a wholesale lab needs some 'standing out' to get a foot in the door beyond just big box lab rat, too.)

The segregation of lab/"retail" doesn't do eye care any favors. In my perfect world, no one would be allowed in the retail/dispense side (or pre-exams) without having graduated lab competency first. The difference between the opticians and the baristas is really knowing what to do with a lensometer...and what they're looking at through it. Dispensing skills come a lot easier once the optics are well grounded through all that tangible, tactile experience baked into the brain along with the math.

[optical24/7]

It was good old Willy Sutton who is credited with that statement although he later denied it in his autobiography.

Thanks for blowing my dramatic effect.....

[Browman]

Unfortunately, optical is currently facing a very brutal paradigm shift. As online drives more ODs either out of business or into the arms of chain retail, they're spoon-fed the idea that they're opti-gods and the lowly opticians should be so grateful to be making minimum wage and be allowed to do such an "easy" job for the money. I, myself, bowed out of retail optical when an OD told me that we would never receive bonuses or commissions and that the most we could hope for in raises were $0.75-$1.00 a year. I had the (mis)fortune to sit in on a few meetings run by the upper-echelons of this particular company and got to hear their official stance on opticians, straight from the horse's mouth: "No one comes to see them. Their names aren't on the door. They don't have degrees. Their only job is to make you [the OD] look good, and make you money. And that's it." Apparently, the official consensus was that too many opticians had been getting too big for their britches (that is, asking for raises) and a company-wide initiative was put in place to tamp down the rebellion.

More and more, chains-- or people affiliated with them-- are helping to foot the bill for ODs' educations. They're getting them early and they're getting them naive to the field. That allows them to not only begin hammering their anti-optician garbage to ODs early, but it puts the ODs in a position of accepting the mentality unquestioningly. They're young, grateful for the help, and in a prime position to have their egos stoked.

As counter intuitive as it may sound, I believe at this point that online might become the new domain of the skilled optician. I've recently had the pleasure of meeting reps from several "online boutiques" that sell in-house, high-end frames and employ ABO opticians to supervise their operations and handle customer support. I've also encountered a small handful of online "relensing services" that only edge lenses to POF and also employ ABO opticians as their lab people and customer support teams. The opticians I've spoken with were happy and well compensated.