Cut Rate Contacts

After college, before Bethany and I found each other, I went to law school for about five minutes. I dropped out because I could not force myself to read for hours on end about two drunks and whether they made a contract on a napkin so I went to London. My first job was selling contact lenses on commission in the Financial District.

The guy who ran the place had crooked teeth and wore loud, plaid jackets. Not that anyone saw him. He sat upstairs and watched the store on closed circuit TV. I talked to him twice: the day he hired me, then two weeks later, on the day he fired me.

Like lots of jobs in the medical field, this one was a volume business. We were the used car lot of improved vision.

I lied to get the job and its signing bonus, which amounted to a couple hundred dollars. I knew nothing about contact lenses. The other salespeople were always messing with their contact lenses. Looking in a mirror while they picked at their eyes, or taking the lenses out, and sticking them in that solution stuff. Perhaps my employer assumed otherwise, but I did not wear contacts. So I would sit near one of the little mirrors and mess with my eyes as if I did, just to fit in.

The girl who trained me was Vietnamese.  She had her hair pulled back and huge, contact perfect, dark eyes. She was pretty, and did not laugh at one joke I told her. In fact, everyone else who worked there was Vietnamese and they were very serious about the cut rate eye business. My training for the job was less than extensive. The girl quickly explained how it was done. She was watching the front door while I tried to ask a few questions. She cut me off.

“Jeez. You wear da contact lenses?”

“Of course,” I said.

“You can put da contact lenses in da eyes?” She was pointing at my eyes.

“Yes.”

“Then you show customer how it is done with you contacts in you eyes one time. One time only. Then you make dem put contacts in dey eyes. One time only. You slow at the training station, we wait while you be slow. With the contact lens, it is in and out, in and out, next customer, you see?”

She had already moved on. The five girls on the sales staff took turns when clients came in the store. She was a hard worker. She was not going to miss her turn because of me.

As I watched the other salespeople interact with the customers I was impressed with authority with which they moved the clients through the store. After all, these people were coming in there because they had less than perfect vision. Add to it the obvious language barrier between customers using a very proper His Majesty’s English, and a group of people who sounded like they learned how to converse in a gas station bathroom, and you had to wonder if either side really understood the other.

            When my turn came, I led an older woman to the optometrist. In fifteen seconds, the optometrist determined that she had bad vision. Then I took her to stand before the wall of boxes. This was kind of strange, like an inserted step in the process to make sure the client felt like they were getting some bang for their buck. First, this woman could not see. Second, she was confronted with a wall of small, identical boxes containing various strength contact lenses. I looked at the slip of paper I’d gotten from the optometrist. There was a spot on the wall I was supposed to lead her to that fit her needs. I wasn’t sure if we were in the right place.

            I took a box out, compared the numbers printed on the box with the slip in my hand, it was close enough. I nodded at her confidently, then led her to the training station.

            Since I did not wear contact lenses, there was no way in hell I could get a contact in my own eye, so the in and out was going to have to be in the woman’s eyes. I perched that little contact on my finger, moved it toward her eye, and dropped it on the floor.

            But I never stopped moving. Instead of acknowledging my mistake, I went through the motions of putting something in her eye. She blinked a few times.

            “That feels spot on,” she said. “I’d have thought where would be more discomfort.”

            I smiled, the professional at work.

            I was more careful with that second little bastard. I dug it out of the container, held it upright, pried her eye open, then jammed the contact in there before it could slide off my finger. There was a quick struggle, a cry of pain accompanied her feet thrashing in the air, then lots and lots of blinking.

            With my first customer, I had her do the second in and out with that one eye only, since the other contact was on the floor.  She did a much better job than I did, and before I knew it, she was out the door.

My first contact lens sale. With commission, I made about two quid.

            I was still adjusting to the pound versus dollar math. Two quid wouldn’t even buy me a pint, let alone pay the rent. I was beginning to understand the importance of the in and out.

Over the next few days, I learned more about my new profession. I learned that selling colored contacts was big money. More than double what a standard sale would bring. The Vietnamese women pushed the colored contacts hard.  It was the same thing with every guy who came in there.

“Yes, da big man, with dose big baby blues, you look like da John Wayne. You buy them, yes?”

I made the mistake of pitching the colored contacts only one time. The problem with the colored contacts was that you could actually see them in the customer’s eye. So if I dropped it on the floor, or stuck it in wrong, then the customer could tell.

“I have one brown eye and one blue eye,” that customer told me.

I looked closer, displaying surprise, but I could already see the other contact. It was folded up in one corner of his eye. I stuck my finger in there to get it, and the thing disappeared, like I’d pushed it on the far side of his eyeball.

Was it possible to push something to the opposite side of an eyeball? Until that moment, I had thought not. What was back there? Was my customer now looking backwards with 20/20 vision?

I had no clue what to do. Get another box off the wall? Admit to the guy that he had a color contact floating around somewhere in the back of his brain?

A cough interrupted my panic.

I turned.

The Vietnamese women and their blind customers were crowding me. They wanted the training station, and I was holding things up.

I told the guy his eyes were too brown for the blue contacts and he bought that for some stupid reason. So I took out the one we could see. Then I looked at the other eye and kind of poked around in there, before leading the guy back to the wall for some regular contacts. I took a deep breath when he finally staggered out the door.

Somehow, for a while at least, I managed to keep my ignorance under wraps and was able to keep up a counterfeit expertise without discovery. But while the pay was good, I felt guilty about what I was doing to our customers. I was terrible at putting the contacts in. My big thumb probably looked like something out of a horror movie as it came at them. They would squirm and thrash about while I wedged the contacts into their eyes, in and out, in and out. Then I’d stand them up, and lead them to the check out. They would try to count money, but most times I had to help them since their eyes were like waterfalls and their lenses were inside out or something. They couldn’t see a thing. Then I’d march them out the door and hope they didn’t get hit by a bus.

My fellow sales people treated me with the scorn, and I silently took it. Until one day I saw the girl who trained me do something that looked familiar.

 “I saw that,” I said once she was back in line behind me.

“You see nothing.”

“No, you dropped one of the contacts from your last customer and left it on the floor. You didn’t put anything in his left eye.”

She frowned. “Where you think I learn that?”

It took a second. “You got it from me?”

“Duh. We see you. You faster in and out. All we do it now.”

“All we do it? Wait, we’re only putting one contact in these people? That’s wrong.”

“Not right, not wrong.” She looked both ways, then held up her finger. “Da in and out. That’s all.”

I was beyond disturbed. Someone was going to get hurt, and it was going to be my fault. Not only did I wonder if someone might step in front of a bus, what if they drove a bus? These people were going to learn that they could see better with one eye. Thanks to me, England was going to become an island of winkers.

I tried every way I could to convince my co-workers that we had to stop the one eyed insertion process. No matter how long I tied up the training station, I got two contacts in each and every customer.

I pleaded, but the Vietnamese shut me out. They had found a better, faster way, and I had shown it to them.

It was only a matter of time before the guy in the loud jacket summoned me to his office.

He was sitting at a desk, a wall of tiny black and white screens behind him.

“You insist on putting your hands on the customers,” he said as soon as I entered the room.

“Excuse me?”

“You touch them. We are not as gregarious as you Americans. We are more reserved.”

He was wearing clothes that looked like vomit. Instead of saying that, I said, “Of course I touch them. I have to lead the blind people through your little maze of a store.”

“There have also been complaints from your co-workers.”

The Vietnamese women had turned on me. I could have fought it. Workers have more rights in the UK. I could have kept that job. But the guilt was wearing me out. I was done. Technically, leaving as soon as I was, I owed that signing bonus back to the company, but I didn’t have it, and no one asked for it. I walked back to the elevator, then picked my way through the customers and emerged on the busy street, my career in the cut rate contact business at a close.

Just before I descended into the tube stop, I looked over my shoulder. The customers were coming and going out of that store like little ants. Could they see? Were they in pain? Did they wink all the time like my uncle Ed?

Did it matter?

They just kept coming and going out of that store, just like they did all day long. The in, and the out. In and out.