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I have been using the same pair of glasses since 2016 — quite a long time for me, and I had noticed that my eyesight had indeed deteriorated. Especially reading small print had gotten hard, like reading ingredient lists on packaging. Often it would be easiest for me to take off my glasses and hold the item close to my face. But it was clear that something needed to be done.

I had been a customer at the nearby SpecSavers. They advertise with the fact that their eye-measurements are always done by people with a diploma, which I like because I have bad eyes so I want a precise measurement. So I made an appointment and went there.

I was amazed by the paper workflows they have. The first measurement is taken by a machine that spits out the numbers on a sticker, which is stuck to a form. Then there is a manual measurement step to verify the machine measurements and do some fine-tuning — I need bifocals so that’s certainly a thing to take into account, and all of it was written on forms. You know, pen on paper, on pre-printed forms.

It took us some time to select the frames we wanted, and then there was another process to measure the center of my pupils on the glasses etc. And again, everything was done on paper, with the lady copying stuff from one piece of paper onto another. The measurements were written down three times (I was getting three frames), all by hand. And I strongly suspect that it’ll all be entered into some ordering system later on as well.

For someone who works in automating paper processes, it was mind-blowing to see how a modern franchise still worked in the same way as they did in the 1980’s.

We made an appointment for two weeks later to collect the glasses. We went there and made ourselves known to the guy behind the counter and he had us sit in the waiting area. We waited for a long time. Turns out that they had forgotten us, they thought we were there for a hearing test. Maybe they should have taken that test themselves, because I was very clear that I came to collect the glasses. The man tried to placate us with offering us a cup of coffee — from the machine that we had been sitting next to for the past 40 minutes. If we had wanted coffee, we would have gotten it ourselves! Suffice to say that we will not be returning there.

People warned me that bifocals would be weird a first, and that I should take care not to fall down the stairs because of the distortion in the lenses. But I have had an easy time adjusting to them, no problem!

I got a pair of “computer glasses”: mono-focals optimised for the distance to the computer screen. They’re comfortable for the desk work I do. I kept them a bit inconspicuous, for during video calls.

And these are the bifocals. I like that tortoiseshell design — thirty years ago I wore similar frames.