The problem with choosing your optician randomly
I'm trying to get contacts again. I've tried 6 different kinds over 2 years, and I finally found a pair that doesn't hurt. However, I couldn't actually see with them, so I went back today.
The scene: A tiny optician's office facing Broadway near Belmont. The front of the store is cluttered with eyeglass display cases and a chair occupied by a Pekingese. Behind that is the counter, then a little "doctor's" office. (He's not a real doctor, right?) Then a flight of stairs leading to a dark bathroom with a toilet that runs constantly and no paper towels.
The actors: The owner, a middle-aged Asian guy with an accent; his blond, teenage son; the employee, Nicole; and the "doctor." Everyone had just ordered Thai food.
The "doctor" told me to put the contacts in, so I sat at the counter by the cash register, filthy hands and all, and stuck the right one in. For some reason, the left one just did not want to go in -- it just kept sticking to my finger. So I spent a half hour or so sitting by the cash register, poking myself and yelling "damn!" occasionally while store patrons handed their credit cards over my head.
Eventually I got grossed out by my fingers and the contacts. I ran upstairs to the bathroom and worked at it for a while longer next to the son, where at least I could use stronger language. Then I stumbled back down stairs (the son told me to watch my step, which doesn't help someone with contacts that don't work). The "doctor" told me the owner could help me get some better lenses.
Fine, except the owner was busy yelling at the customers. The woman said there was a scratch in her glasses. The owner said he didn't see anything but he would send them back out, and could she come back Thursday? The woman told him she didn't have time for that, she'd already been a number of times, and she didn't know why she had come there.
Eventually I saw the eye doctor, who told me to wait for the owner to help me find some different lenses. When I stepped back out, there was a full-blown shouting match going on. "You must be blind," the woman was saying. "You call me blind? You want to insult me right in my own store? I'll call the police!" The man said, "Don't you be rude to her. I wish we'd never come in here." On and on.
I looked up from the paper when I heard, "Why don't we go to court, then?"
"I could punch you in the face instead!" This was the owner.
Surprisingly, after that exchange, I heard silence. (There was a display blocking my view.) They continued examining the glasses.
"Let me examine you and see if the prescription is right."
"If you can't get my glasses right I don't want you looking at my eyes!"
"Well, fuck you then."
"Fuck you!"
The police and courts were invoked again. Nicole and the son fled.
By this point, I really didn't want to buy glasses from these people, and the last thing in the world I wanted was to seek the owner's wise counsel on what kind of contacts I needed. Eventually the owner took the glasses upstairs to work on them. I waited and waited and waited. Meanwhile I could hear the couple working on the other customers in the store: "I want to take him to court, but I think it would cost more than the glasses."
Finally the "doctor" came out, now with overpowering pad thai breath, and gave me the new lenses, which I then had to put in at the register by the argument again. Luckily they went in easy this time, I said I thought they were good but would call otherwise, and got the hell out of there.
Superior Eye Care, 3164 N. Broadway. Don't go.
