10 minute exam slots all day SUCK. Management is not open to making any alterations to the schedule, even if you’re getting behind consistently. Every exam slot is the same length whether it’s a 90 year old with diabetes, a multifocal contact lens fitting, or a healthy emmetrope. Many days I’ll have like a 2 hour period that’s completely full where I get really behind, and then other parts of the day that are totally empty where I am sitting around. This is because of the online scheduler- there’s no rhyme or reason as to how the exams are distributed throughout the day. The doctor in charge of my state performs incredibly rushed exams and takes shortcuts and that’s really the only way to make the 10 minute exam slots work. I end up having to refer out for literally everything, even a basic glaucoma screening for a low risk individual, which I am not a fan of. Tech training is not quality and pay for support staff is below industry standard in my area so staff turnover is really bad. I’ve been here for less than a year and there’s only 1 staff member other than the managers that has been here the whole time. Techs do VA, color vision, and pretesting machines but no chair skills or HPIs, really. They are planning to roll out OCTs which is an improvement, but they don’t take medical insurance and probably never will so still kind of challenging to actually manage medical conditions because they’re going to be cash pay every time. Overall, I wouldn’t really recommend and am leaving after just shy of a year working here. I’ve worked worse jobs, but because it’s such a big corporation management is not really able to fix any issues and profit always comes first. A lot of the doctors in my state are having to work the Sunday after Christmas (why???) and I am unable to travel for the holidays this year because they wouldn’t allow me to take more than 2-3 days off for thanksgiving and Christmas.
