Life is riddled with a procession of minor impediments

[Something Fishy]

Did he need to say it like that though?  Does not come across well there at all.

Some management types just need to be seen saying something negative in public to demonstrate their innate superiority over their minions, little realising that what it actually illustrates are poor quality control systems that they themselves are responsible for.  We've all worked with them. Some of us even are them.

As an aside, one of my most bittersweet memories is presenting my father with my just-submitted  postgrad thesis, which had taken me three endless years of expense, sweat and latterly torment, all nicely bound in two black leather volumes with gold lettering and all that balls.  He opened it at a random page, scanned a single paragraph and said: "well you'll need to change this: there's a typo right there".

True what you say there Tordels.

[Darren Stephens]

I noticed in Asda that I was having trouble reading the ingredients label on some soup...time for an eye test ,I feel.

[Mardroid]

I'm short-sighted, so I can read without glasses just fine, but things blur in the distance .  Well okay that's true for most people, but I mean it blurs much closer... meaning I wear my glasses most of the time.

I can actually read okay with my glasses on too, although I don't need them then, but when you wear them most of the time you forget you're actually wearing them.

However, I have noticed recently (well the last year or two, anyway) that for very small text I need to remove the glasses to focus. I'm not sure if this is a new thing due to a change in eyesight. Or if it's always been the case, and I just didn't notice as my it's only been the last few years that I've needed to read tiny text. Namely the model numbers in the battery compartments of mobile phones.   (I'm not doing anything dodgy, but I won't bore you with the details, since this post is probably boring enough.)

I do need an eye test too. Not that I've noticed much difference. It's just been years since I had one.

[Link Prime]

Rude to ask, but how old are you Mardroid?
If you're 45 plus it's just normal age related presbyopia.

[Jim_Campbell]

If you're 45 plus it's just normal age related presbyopia.

Yup. Comes to us all. As you age, the lens of the eye loses flexibility and with it your ability to adjust focus to near distances is diminished.

Opticians are conditioned to sell you varifocals, but these require you to learn to move your eyes to look down at small text and near objects, which might not be suitable for you. They aren't appropriate for me, because my near work is at a drawing board, so the glance-downwards-for-near-correction thing doesn't work. When you have your eyes tested, be very clear that you're doing close work and might be better served with a separate pair of reading glasses.

(If you do decide to try varifocals, be aware that a small percentage of punters can never adapt to varis. Any optician worth their salt will have an extended return/refund period to give you a risk-free opportunity to try and get used to them. The ones I used to work for did a 60-day return period on varifocals for that reason.)

Cheers

Jim

[The Legendary Shark]

Whilst they aren't a panacea, eye exercises can help keep your eyes in good nick.

[The Legendary Shark]

Deleted dp. (Couldn't see which buttons I was pressing...? *chortles*)

[Theblazeuk]

I noticed in Asda that I was having trouble reading the ingredients label on some soup...time for an eye test ,I feel.

To be fair you were trying from the edge of the car park.

[Hawkmumbler]

I noticed in Asda that I was having trouble reading the ingredients label on some soup...time for an eye test ,I feel.

To be fair you were trying from the edge of the car park.

Oh blaze, you comedian you!

[Link Prime]

Any optician worth their salt will have an extended return/refund period to give you a risk-free opportunity to try and get used to them. The ones I used to work for did a 60-day return period on varifocals for that reason.

Seems we may have taken a similar career path at some stage Jim.
How long were you working in practice?

I've been working for a large and well known lens manufacturer for the guts of 20 years, but only spent less than 2 working in practice part-time (while training as a D.O.)
Dealing with the general public was...an experience 

[Mardroid]

Rude to ask, but how old are you Mardroid?
If you're 45 plus it's just normal age related presbyopia.

I think* I'm 41 in March. So that could be the issue.

I don't need reading glasses though,.that's for sure. I can make out text very well without glasses, being short sighted. Although I might need to bring it a bit closer to my face. Heh.) Its just that I used to be able to see text well with my long distance glasses on (and I still can for the most part. I'm wearing them right now typing this on a phone). It's the really tiny text, like you'd read in prescriptions for which the glasses would need to come off.

*I'm not joking there. I'm at that age where Im not entirely sure. I'm 40 or 41 now anyway.

Edit. Yes of course I'm 40. I was born in March 1975 and its 2016 yet, so 41 isn't far off. What  dumbo, I had to work that out.

[Jim_Campbell]

Seems we may have taken a similar career path at some stage Jim.
How long were you working in practice?

I was never directly on the professional side, I was the Customer Service Manager for $WELLKNOWNHIGHSTREETOPTICIAN which necessitated a fairly solid grasp of both the 1989 Opticians Act (and subsequent amendments) and the 1979 Sales of Goods Act.

Amongst other things, our department was the public-facing part of all professional service complaints and one of my jobs was taking the responses from the professional service teams and translating them into comprehensible English without losing the technical exactness or exposing the company to legal liability. This meant a lot of conversations with DOs and OOs!

Cheers

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

I don't need reading glasses though,.that's for sure.

Reading glasses is a bit of a misnomer, but is used because that's what they're mostly used for. Really, they're just a different prescription for focussing on close things to the one you need for focussing on distant things, because of the loss of lens flexibility described above. Because presbyopia is effectively a tendency towards long sight, there can actually be a period where your eye sight improves if you're short-sighted to begin with.

Cheers

Jim

[Dandontdare]

yeah, my eyes were fine till my early 40s - then it was reading glasses, 2 yrs later stronger readers, 2 yrs after that I tried varifiocals but took them back because I couldn't get on with them (found I was always looking through the wrong bit and swivelling my head around like a loon) and replaced with more readers, but 2 yrs after that I was just getting so sick of whipping my specs on and off a million times a day (and my middle distance was deteriorating too) so I tried varis again and persisted with them. Didn't actually take too long to get used to them and now I wear them all the time and I CAN SEE STUFF!

[Satanist]

I have to clear majority of my house for building work and have SERIOUSLY underestimated how many comics I have up the loft. I thought I could hide them in the eaves until I looked and found it half filled with comic boxes I'd forgot all about. Bollocks!