CertificationJul 12, 20266 min read
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Optician pay and benefits
An optician sells the frame, measures for it, then adjusts the finished pair with heat and pliers until it sits level on a face that never is. Practices hire for the selling and the fitting both, and rarely say so in the posting.
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What a remake costs the practice
A remake is a redo the practice usually absorbs rather than bills to the patient. The lenses often come back free, because labs cover their own errors and commonly allow one no-charge non-adapt, so the cost is chair time, shipping and turnaround. The patient also stops trusting the first fitting. The trade figure most quoted puts remakes at 15% of lens orders once warranty replacements are counted, and a well-run dispensary at 5% or under. Setting the adaptation expectation before the sale is the standard advice for holding it down.
Your questions about optician jobs, answered
- What does an optician do besides help choose frames?
The measuring and the problem-solving are the rest of it. You take pupillary distance and fitting heights, pick a lens material and design that suits the prescription and the frame, order it correctly, then adjust the finished pair on the patient's face. When somebody can't adapt to new lenses, the optician is who works out whether it's the prescription, the measurements or the frame.
- Do opticians work in a lab?
Some practices have one in the back, and it changes the job. In-house finishing means cutting and edging lenses to the frame, mounting them and repairing breakages on the spot, so the posting is partly a technical one. Practices without a lab send the work out and the optician's day stays entirely on the dispensing floor.
- Can an optician fit contact lenses?
Your state decides. Some states let a licensed optician fit and dispense contacts, sometimes with a separate certification such as the NCLE, and others reserve it for the prescriber. The ABO covers spectacles and the state license decides the rest, so check the board before taking a job that assumes contacts are yours.
Optician career guides