When it comes to matters of service, I can be a bit of a pest. I'm the type who walks into doctor's offices armed with my own diagnosis, which I then pit against the doctor's to see which makes more sense. Of course I'm exaggerating, but I am the sort of person who usually demands explanations for things and is assiduous about making complaints. A couple of weeks ago, however, I lapsed: I let an optometrist con me into getting progressives (also known as "no-line bifocals").
I wear glasses to read and to work at the computer. I do not need to wear glasses at any other time (even eye specialists agree with me on this). While my eyes certainly feel less strained when I'm wearing my reading glasses, I haven't yet reached the stage where they're absolutely essential. (I'm not wearing glasses now, for instance -- though that's because I'm too lazy to look for them. Where are the damn things anyway?)
As I see it, progressives are for people who need to be wearing glasses more often than not. So why did my optical people attempt to foist them on me? The argument they give is that you'll eventually have to wear them, so the sooner you start, the better. In that case, why don't I just invest in a walker and start using it right now? Or pull out a few of my perfectly good teeth and get some bridgework, since I may eventually have to deal with that as well. Hell, I'm going to go out right now and invest in some adult diapers.
What they also don't tell you is that progressive lenses cost several times the price of conventional ones (and I know it's my own damn fault for playing against type and not asking about this).
The more important point of the story is that I couldn't even see in the damn things. The area of the lens designed for reading -- the area I'll be using most often -- was about a millimetre wide, and I had to keep my neck locked at a particular angle in order to see anything clearly. Within a week I'd have been wearing a neck brace. So last week I marched back to the optical place and demanded that the progressives be replaced with conventional lenses. They ran through all the arguments again, but I stood my ground, and tomorrow I'll be collecting a pair of proper reading glasses.
While I've never met anybody who actually likes them, I suppose that progressives are right for some people. And perhaps one day I will need them, in which case I'll gladly go through the required period of adjustment. My particular problem, however, was an easy one to solve, and didn't involve invasive surgery or loss of a major organ. You hear all the time about women who have hysterectomies that they learn afterwards they didn't need, or C-section deliveries because their ob-gyn preferred to do things on his/her schedule, not the patient's. The lucky ones among us have people in our lives who look out for our best interests; but in many cases this person is likely to be you yourself.