customer service representative

sales associate

retail assistant manager

retail sales associate

optician

Visionworks

The employees at Visionworks are top notch, overall. And at a store like mine, we had really banded together for a long time. It makes life easier when you know your workers have your back. You learn a ton of things working there that can help you in other fields and it is an EXCELLENT entry level position for anyone. That said, the company itself is poorly run. 

As soon as our GM left the store (she was pretty much chased out for not kissing enough butt and not making a sales goal by a few thousand dollars for the year, even though we're in the poor part of town.) things went down hill. The corporate environment at Visionworks is absolutely horrendous.There is no appreciation for contributions of the workers there, and they are always meddling in your store and moving things. Every time they are in (and they're in a lot) things get moved. You can never do anything right with them, even if you do it the way they say. They came in before the store opened one day, and re-merchandised the entire store saying that our store has to look that way because that's the way they left it and that's to "plan o gram." The next week they were all back, moving everything yet AGAIN and saying that none of it was right, blaming us. Guess what? THEY WERE THE ONES WHO PUT IT THERE AND WE MOVED NOTHING. And the way they say is never right because they don't work in the store. Employee feedback on how things are working is not accepted or needed, as their boardroom has already figured everything out.

 Their Running The Sales Floor model is absolutely laughable in busy stores as the overly frugal leadership of the company refuses to staff you adequately to run it. This leads to long wait times and angry customers due to the fact that the "Quarterback" has to stand there and do nothing, while 3 people go around without help, and 2 people help customers. The quarterback can't help with anything. Not answering phones, not getting involved in any sales activity, not making any adjustments or anything. They stand there, and customers complain about the fact that 2 people are running around the store at 100 miles per hour while we're busy and the phones ring off the hook and the "quarterback" has no choice but to hold a clipboard (most of the time, quite guiltily) and delegate ALL tasks down, except for greeting and telling them to look at frames.  

Once you do work with a customer, most are very nice. However the vast majority (especially in my area) come in for the 2/89 sale which is on basic lenses and clearance frames. It is advertised everywhere (and sales that would actually allow for better lenses and frames are minimized in advertising, even though they would get the customers better products at competitive prices compared to all other eyewear retail chains) and when you explain to the person that that sale really isn't a good one for them, they rightly pull the bait and switch card out on you. Corporate PUNISHES you for selling the sales they advertise in the paper and customers occasionally get very angry when you show them the other sales that you have. Again, especially in my area where 90 bucks is expensive. We have to run that sale, knowing from an ethical standpoint that most customers won't really benefit from it, and then talk about a company value of Integrity.

At the end of the day, you have a company has great workers everywhere you go, being undermined and alienated to the point where most are quitting by a money hungry, corporate groupthink machine that has no idea where they want their niche in the market to be. It's an unfortunate situation for a company with such high potential. Visionworks needs to stop focusing on making A Better You, and more on making A Better Them

 When I first started, it was a great place to work. Coworkers got along, hours were good, and I was content. But the slow breakdown of the work culture over the year I worked there was atrocious. It became so stressful that I watched pretty much everyone I'd started with leave in the course of a year. We all went from getting along to basically functioning in one giant trauma bond where we knew we were struggling and suffering, but at least we did it together. The team is what held that place up. Not the management nor the business practice. 


 First of all, there were multiple people including myself who worked for this company at full-time hours without full-time benefits for over a year. On three separate occasions, I brought up being moved to full-time so I could get vacation and benefits, but was told no each time or told "we'll talk later". And it kept getting put off despite my sales being phenomenal. 


 Commission rates are abysmal. In a year, I could sell over half a million dollars in product or more. With sales numbers being that high for one person, you'd think the company could afford more than 12 dollars an hour with pennies for commission (and I was one of the higher paid sales employees outside of shift leads/keyholders).


 The poor doctors and staff are overworked because the place only cares about the bottom line. 80+ patients a day plus walk-ins, emergencies, phone calls, scheduling, and insurance verification falling on *maybe* 3 doctors, 4 sales associates, 3 receptionists, and 1 lab tech is too much. You don't get a moment to breathe and everyone is always so stressed that I'm convinced we all only started SSRIs and mood stabilizers *because* we worked there. 


 Management (both upper and middle) is careless at best and incompetent at worst. When I first started, my lunch was forgotten or passed over by management for nearly 4 months. I had to remind them every day that I hadn't taken a lunch when *they* were supposed to be the ones sending us. 


 While on about management, let's talk about how they always joke about overworking the doctors. Let's talk about how they'd open schedules up and overbook us then just conveniently be off work the following day. It's pathetic behavior and deserves to be called out.


 I'm also a chronic pain sufferer. I've been dealing with arthritis, nerve pain, and bone pain ever since I was 15 years old. I often need to sit down and there are days when I can't bend or stoop to do certain activities. Even still, as a sales associate, I was often told not to be sitting and expected to be standing pretty much at all times unless I was actively seated with a patient and making a sale. Bright side: after about 4 months there, we were so obscenely busy and understaffed that I spent more time rushing between patients than waiting on charts, so sitting down wasn't too hard to achieve. 


 I work for a competitor now and can safely say that the things they claim are "normal" for the optical industry are absolutely not normal. My mental health, physical wellbeing, and pay have all improved in leaving this company. 


 A tip for visionworks: if one individual can sell 500k+ in merchandise yearly, you can afford to pay your employees more than 12 dollars an hour and you can certainly afford to make your part-time employees into full-time employees. Oh, and 12 cents on the hour isn't a raise. It's an insult. People deserve better. Do better. 

I was a troubled youth who had made some mistakes with the law and wanted to change my life , Inside I knew that I was a good person and I can be a positive contributor to society .
Having some cases against me for a misdemeanor , it was difficult to find a job and I never had the money to invest in a trade . 
My single mother disabled due to cancer raised me and my 2 other brothers . being the older brother , I thought it was my responsibility to find a job and also help out while at the same time stay away from trouble and build a better future .

Because of my history and my personal opinion I didn't think I would change my life. 
After getting rejected at most big companies I decided to take my luck to a temp agency called SNL staffing 
they did not judge me of my past and helped me start an opportunity at a company called visionworks 

During my time there I learned alot and found so much interest in the job , I was proud of what i was doing .

While I was working there I explained to my manager and h.r about how I had court dates and had a trouble pass that i was trying to fix . I did not hide anything from the company because i wanted to be completely honest for when the time came of finishing my probation period I would be a good candidate to be a permanent employee. 

I finished the probation period and was hired to be a permanent. I was so proud of myself , I was staying away from trouble ,making an honest living and beating the charges I had. I felt good that I was starting to turn my life around .

While working at visionworks I had requested days off that I needed very urgently like court dates somtimes they understood my situation and somtimes I was given a point .

I started to have conflict with one of my leads , at first I swallowed my pride , did everything I was asked, worked overtime when asked , wich was almost every week .worked at different departments when asked , one day I had approached my manager about the situation if she can move me to night shift , she told me it wasn't in her power to help me change shifts . 

Days went on working with the person who made me feel uncomfortable and mentally sick . I finally went to h.r about the situation and even though I explained how I felt it didn't make the situation better. The coworker then started making claims telling everyone I'm a snitch.... 

Funny right , guy comes into a job hoping to clean up his life and when you try to do things right you get called a snitch.....

What hurts me the most is that I came into this company with the intentions of cleaning up my life and building a positive future . Then when I try to request some thing that can avoid trouble . I was just silenced and called a snitch  , it was making me feel like I didn't belong , I was losing sleep and feeling mentally sick . 
I tried to ask for help but I was silenced and was just suppose to act like everything was okay. 
I really didn't want to quit but I felt silenced and there was nothing left for me to do.

Good company to work with if you just want a temporary job..



Pros:
- Shifts are not rotating. If you're on day shift, you don't work nights, and vice versa.

- Talking among coworkers while working is discouraged. If you are the kind of person who NEEDS to talk all day, go for a customer service job because manufacturing is not for you. Please. I hate it when people try to talk to me all day. It is distracting.

- The rule about having to wait a year between promotions is largely ignored. If they need you elsewhere, and you can do the job, they'll promote you early.

- The benefits package is pretty good. Our vision insurance is free for the employee and cheap for dependants. The medical insurance plans are accepted nearly everywhere (I have the PPO).

Cons:
- Having a separate day shift and night shift sometimes feels like having two separate companies sharing a building and working at cross purposes. On day shift, we come in sometimes and spend the first half of the day fixing everything night shift did the night before. They save up piles of rejected jobs for us to process on our shift, so that their breakage counts will be lower and ours higher.  They leave messes that we have to clean up. They don't put equipment and supplies back where they belong. They rarely refill supplies and NEVER wipe down the tables before they leave. They pass jobs to the next department that should have been sent to breakage process instead, and we have to catch it and fix it on our shift. Night shift itself seems to be the biggest gripe among the day shift crew.

- People are allowed to display their horrendous taste in music by playing it loudly on portable speakers, even though speakers are against the rules. I'd rather listen to audiobooks on my earbuds to make the time pass faster, but I can't concentrate on it with other people's music playing out loud. No matter what kind of earbuds I'm using, I can still hear their music unless I listen to loud music myself to drown out theirs.

- The benefits are good, but the pay is merely OK when we're on overtime, which is all the time due to staffing shortages (unrelated to COVID, this started several years before that). Overtime is mandatory, and exhausting. That's 50 hours per week, every week. There's no work/life balance, only work. If you somehow manage to get out of overtime (using PTO, etc.), your paychecks will be much smaller but at least you'll have the energy to actually go to work. 

- If you have legitimate concerns, and you bring it up with your leads, don't expect anything to happen. They just smile and nod and that's it. Same for supervisors and managers.

Overall, it could be worse but it could definitely be better. When I first started here I had come from a particularly horrible job in food service so I was glad to be in pretty much any job but that one. I have been promoted several times and my pay is sufficient when I'm on overtime but I feel like I'm never home and live at work, basically. 

I was hired by VisionWorks in 2006 as a salesperson to sell eyewear for the company. I noticed they started a paper trail on me as soon as I was hired as they did everyone that worked there.  I suspect that was so that if we decided to fight back against the corruption within the company at any point, they would already have their munitions to justify firing us.  They would tell us to use the "coupon" button liberally, then chastise us for using it too often and write us up. When I first started working there under my original manager, we would make up folders for clients as they came into the store and take those clients in order as they came into the store.  Over time after my manager quit due to the corruption, managers and assistant managers were hired that were clearly greedy and corrupt themselves. They would look through the folders of new customers and choose the ones for themselves that would pay a large commission for certain products we sold there.  Then they would leave the other folders that paid a lower commission (if any) for the rest of us, those clients that were paying with government subsidies, etc.  Toward the end of my time there the corporate office initiated new policies that were nothing short of "corrupt" and illegal. They forced us to add products onto the customer's order whether they wanted it or not and told us at a "secret" meeting after hours that if we didn't do it they would send us to Pennsylvania every weekend for "training" at our expense until we agreed to do it. I lived in southern Maryland at the time.  Their Pennsylvania office was hours away! This was nothing short of a threat. I refused to do something so dishonest so they targeted me for termination even though I received many certificates and awards for my sales and customer service from the company during my time there. After 3 years with the company they had finally found something they could use to justify firing me as insignificant as it was. The Dr. and manager worked together to trap me into a policy violation which ended my employment there. I didn't fight it because I was fed up with the corruption at that point and ready to move on. There truly needs to be an investigation of their policies and practices.

This isn't a bad place to begin your career in optics- they offer pretty decent training regarding eyewear, medical billing, insurance and retail in general. They'll also pay for your expenses to certify with the ABO, but only if you pass. 

Pros:
Friendly and knowledgeable co-workers and general managers who do the best they can with what thin resources upper management provides. Honestly, this is what keeps me in my current job. It's a very inclusive environment and I never felt that I wasn't allowed to express myself. You also learn a lot, if only because you face a lot of unique challenges day-to-day that drive you to look up information. The eyecare insurance is also good- free exam and two pairs of glasses per year, and a pretty decent discount. You can also make a fairly flexible schedule and request time off, as well as accrue PTO. When it isn't busy, the environment isn't too stressful and it's fun to learn more about eyewear and eye health in general. The doctors are also all very nice and share a friendly relationship with their crew. 

Cons: 
Upper management is pretty happy to overwork and underpay their employees despite the unique skillset we learn and knowledge we acquire. Your store will seldom be fully staffed, and they make you work by yourself on Sundays or dark days (no doctor) pretty frequently with little regard for safety. Requesting time off is more or less fine until the holidays- but don't expect to get any time off whatsoever in the winter months besides Christmas day. Holidays are also workdays and include overtime which is mandatory. 

Commissions are fairly low- 2.5% , which they'll take back if a customer makes a return. Pay is also not great, starting at 16.50... with commissions, it ends up being a little closer to 19+ depending on how busy your store is. You're also encouraged to do lots of discounts to make sales or make customers happy, which cuts into your commission as well. 

There is also a lot of red tape to do anything, but that's pretty typical of a big company. Managers are also pretty happy to bend over backwards for a patient regardless of rudeness in order to make sales. 

Mostly, though- use this job to get skills, and go somewhere that believes in paying you a living wage. 

So I'll start off by saying this company is a huge step forward for someone who had to work about 16 hours a day with two jobs on a bus line. However I'm not blind to the flaws you can very clearly see. The huge issues in the store I'm transferring out of soon (to begin my apprenticeship at another location) are employees being held responsible for their actions and job titles and the customers are so whiny. Being that I worked in the capital location we are always SLAMMED with work as front desk associates. Phone is always ringing for appointments to be booked, patients always need to be pre screened, files never prepped unless done by myself, insurance info never correct, and orders that can never be found in the system that keep you running around that sales floor as everyone else sits at a desk staring at you. Employees never on the actual floor to help with the things that you cannot do so customers get mad and you have to run to the back to consistently grab someone. Plus tray calls have to be made and about 20-40 come out at a time. Oh and Customers always have questions you're not trained to answer because there is no time and no one wants to do it anyways. All the while I had two employees that I worked with that we're supposed to help and just sat around and hung out in the contact office or in the lab with an employee who very clearly violates rules of relations with other employees. I wasn't even at my 90 days and I was in contact with another store to get out and move up in the company to get away from those two employees that hold that store back from ever moving forward. It's a catch 22 because I'm protected by a union but so is the old hag that has been there forever and got demoted from a management position and has never been able to accept that she sucks. She will haze and terrorize any new employee and this know at multiple locations. And no one does anything about it. Orders frequently placed wrong or don't come in on time and being the first person people come into contact with I'm frequently yelled at for things I don't control. Hence my leaving. On top on the other hand the pay is good and the benefits are nice too. Moved up quick enough to the point I decided to stay.

Understaffed, overbooked, and prone to making wildly unpopular decisions in regards to handling patient care. This job is phenomenal in terms of benefits as well as a great place to actually learn… because you’re going to have to learn to do just about everything, even if it’s not within the scope of your official title. I learnt so much about patient care, skilled communication, how to do basic repairs, dispensing and checking in, and most importantly, insurance and EHR skills.

 Oftentimes due to severe understaffing in my territory, I’d be running back and forth between the exam area and the sales floor to help out or asked to help at other stores, but finding coverage at our store was so difficult when we needed it. 
The telehealth system is so slow and unpopular, especially with returning older patients or families with young children. 
 Sometimes upper management made promises that were never followed up on regarding staffing situations and getting in-person doctor coverage. Some of the decisions made by upper management were also very very detached and out of touch, oftentimes negatively affecting the workflow for actual clinic and store staff. the iPads we now have to use to chart and process sales are way slower than the computers, we are not allowed to sit down at the desks due to higher ups not liking it, and the way that booking is arranged (packed to the brim) causes many patient complaints, especially when we are doing telehealth exams. 
Finally, sometimes management can be really prone to misunderstanding employees and not providing reasonable accommodations. It’s very sad because everyone is under pressure to meet extremely high-pressure goals while working under a disorganized system, at the expense of clear and kind communication. This drives away many workers and patients alike. 

However, I met so many wonderful people through this job and have learnt so much and discovered a great passion for helping others. This job will make you very tough and experienced but it can really drain your mental health, especially if you are a sensitive or shy person. 

I started working at Visionworks during one of their sales. I was hired on at $11 an hour. I was put into pretest which was actually really fun to learn. You would have to interact with the patients for this role. Sometimes there would be patients that would refuse to go through pretest because they were there a week or a month earlier. But eyes can change day to day and results can vary. For the most part pretest wasn't all the stressful. I then learned reception and my first day I was thrown up there with no training by myself. The manager for that day did cuss at me for not knowing how to work the system (or he was mad at the situation but I honestly couldn't tell). After the first day though reception became one of the easiest job to do. Then when it came to frame styling, that was a lot to remember. With prices and the different type of lens you really need to know what you were talking about in order to not confuse the customer. This job a lot of patients would get angry about a number of things that would be out of my control; insurance copays, same day payment, no installment payments, prices of frames and lenses, how the buy one get one works (you could not use this promotion with insurance), and that they were simply not eligible for glasses that year through their insurance. They would yell and say they aren't coming back and call me names and cuss at me, but what am I supposed to do about those things.....
There are other areas you can learn like dispensing, contacts and being a lab tech. Even if you are trained in every area though you will not get a raise unless you become a 3rd key. By doing that you get a $2 raise and more worked forced on to you. I mentioned to one of the regional managers about wanting to be a licensed optician and they said that they would look into if the company would be willing to pay for me to have that training. But I got laid off due to the pandemic (absolutely not blaming Visionworks). So if you do work here and you want a raise or to move up, the GM won't help you. It's best to ask the regional managers when they come in. 


My time in the optical industry has been nothing short of transformative. Not only have I had the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology and innovative products, but I’ve also had the privilege of interacting with a diverse array of clients, each with their unique vision needs and preferences.

One aspect that truly stood out to me was the commitment to excellence that permeates every aspect of the job. From meticulously crafted frames to state-of-the-art lens technology, every product is designed with the utmost care and attention to detail. And it’s not just about selling products – it’s about empowering individuals to live their lives to the fullest by providing them with the gift of clear vision.

But perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my experience in the optical industry has been the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Whether it’s helping a child pick out their first pair of glasses or assisting an elderly individual in finding the perfect solution for age-related vision changes, being able to positively impact someone’s quality of life is truly priceless.

In addition to the fulfilling nature of the work itself, I’ve also been fortunate to be part of a supportive and collaborative team that fosters growth and learning at every turn. From ongoing training opportunities to mentorship programs, the optical industry is not only a place to excel professionally but also a community where individuals are encouraged to thrive and succeed.

In conclusion, my experience in the optical job market has been nothing short of exceptional. From the high-quality products to the meaningful interactions with clients and the supportive work environment, every aspect has exceeded my expectations. If you’re considering a career in the optical industry, I can wholeheartedly say that it’s an opportunity worth pursuing – one that promises not only personal fulfillment but also the chance to make a tangible difference in the lives of others.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 2 salaries reported	$15.00 per hour
Sales associate 21 salaries reported	$17.61 per hour
Retail assistant manager 10 salaries reported	$15.05 per hour
Retail sales associate 6 salaries reported	$19.17 per hour
Optician 5 salaries reported	$25.40 per hour

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