Rose had a haircut yesterday. She also had her eyes checked. They took about the same amount of time, but the haircut cost more than the eye test.
Which probably means that anyone contemplating a career as an opthalmic optician should seriously consider the alternative of women’s hairdressing…
RSS feed
I saw a demo of a great hair-cutting procedure once. You attach a rotating blade some distance into a vacuum cleaner tube, and move the tube over the head. It works best if you also tilt the customer upside down. It could balance things a bit….
Hmm, I thought that was rather silly, but, maybe it isn’t if you can couple that with a computer system that knows where the tube is around the head, and make it a flat tube that can be rotated, and I think you have a pretty versatile hair-cutting solution…. 😉 Sounds like something SecondLife should do.(They have great editing UI for facial features, and have a version 1.0 hair editing solution.)
Isn’t the eye-test a loss-leader? I suspect the money is in the sale of glasses, frames, lenses, etc.
I guess it’s possible the money is in the frames (and other parts), but once you have the modern testing apparatus, it literally takes less than a minute to sit someone down in front of it, press a button, and read off the prescription.
My optometrist likes to also do a test the old fashioned way, perhaps to justify charging more, but the results always come out identical (and I find it very stressful). The machine won’t tell you if you have a disease, though.
My eye tests involve both computerised and manual parts, and the manual parts include quite thorough checks for a range of eye health indicators. It’s very stressful for me, as I cope very poorly with having my eyes held open, and I’d much prefer having a person to do that, rather than a machine! It’s worth it to know that my eyes are OK, though.
Anyone with hair which isn’t dead straight (or very short) will tell you that the hair has to be felt, in order to assess how it falls (under gravity/wind) and how it curls before cutting it. This would involve a rather more complex machine than that proposed above 🙂 I pay for the expertise of a hairdresser who can work these things out. (Not that anyone who has seen my hair in its natural state would believe this – but it’s worse when not properly cut!)
I should also add that I don’t know anyone, who ever has eye tests, who pays the “standard” rate. Most people with contact lenses will be on some kind of subscription rate, where a regular fee provides lenses, tests and so on.
@Ian Yorston: but she’s a girl recommends GlassesDirect.
Of course, one could make the observation that for both a hair cut and an eye test you have the subject stuck in a chair not moving much. Perhaps there’s an opportunity to combine both tasks at once and start making some serious money… 😉