Somebody made it, why can't you fix it?
Apr. 16th, 2003 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarrick
Today got off to a rotten start. I sat down at my desk to work on fixing this rather strange problem at work and before I even got around to getting my first coffee I hear this little "plink" and my glasses fell off my face. Fuck. O.K. this has happened before. There is a little screw in the right arm that likes to come loose. Fine. Having had glasses since I was three I've preformed more than a few emergency repairs and know a few tricks. So into my desk drawer I go for a pen with a metal clip I can break off and use for a screw-driver. Out comes the tiny screw that holds the spring assembly in place and I am mortified to see that the screw from the spring assembly that attaches to the hinge has not simply come loose, but has snapped. Crap. Ordinarily at this point I would switch to my spare set and go shopping for a replacement on Saturday. Problem is these are my spares because my other set broke very similarly last year and I couldn't afford to replace them due to $6/lb organic asparagus. They had been "fixed" with mis-matched arms and still had my old prescription in them. Not having a choice at this point I went home and retrieved them. For those of you reading this that don't wear glasses it should be pointed out that switching prescriptions, particularly back to an old one that isn't quite strong enough, is a recipe for a killer headache.
Come noon I take a rare "lunch" break and head over to Granville Optical for a repair. This is where is really gets bad. The guy says, without so much as looking at the problem, "They're hooped. You'll need a new arm." I explained to him that no, these ones come apart and all I need is a new screw and hinge. I explained how to take them apart so he could see for himself. He tried. Next thing I am in the back room with him showing him how to do it. He explains that he can't order just the screw. Fine. Get an arm with a similar mechanism and swap out the screw. I'll pay for the whole arm, it's a lot cheaper than replacing glasses (with my prescription "cheap" glasses are about $400, just an arm runs about $20). He says he'll look through their parts drawer and see what he can do. I am optimistic.
After work I go back and the "options" he has for me is a mismatched arm or completely replacing the glasses. Neither one is an option. My unexpected root-canal and the two shit-head clients that have not paid have left my plans for New York in June in serious jeopardy already, a new pair of glasses now would mean waiting for Christmas to take my vacation and there is no fucking way I going to walk around anywhere with mismatched arms on my glasses. I thank him for his "effort" and take my glasses as-is.
Now I am depressed. I'm afraid that I'm fucked for June because of a 8 mm long screw. By the time I'm passing the art gallery depression has turned into snarling anger. Are people so incapable of fixing anything anymore? All I needed was a screw and to have the broken bit removed from the hinge. Somewhere someone makes these screws. A tiny metal tube with threads. Not magic. Somebody made it, why can't you fix it?
When I got home I rummaged through my collection of parts. The "broken" arm from the spares I was wearing had a similar mechanism, albeit a sealed one. I tore the casing open and extracted the screw I needed. I didn't have a drill bit small enough to drill out the broken piece of screw from the hinge, but I did have a similar hinge which was only slightly too large. A few moments with a metal file resolved that. It was fiddly work but in about an hour I had replaced the necessary parts and everything is as good as new.
This, tangentially, is why I rarely call tech support lines. 99.899% of the time I have ever spent on support lines involves having some idiot tell me to try something I already tried, which didn't work, which is why I called and then waiting to be escalated to someone with a brain. 0.1% is me telling someone in tier not-completely-clueless exactly what they need to do at their end to fix my problem. The other 0.001% are those semi-miraculous exceptions where I get a good suggestion.
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Date: 2003-04-17 07:14 am (UTC)We'll get to NYC somehow anyway, glasses or no glasses. So there!
;)
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Date: 2003-04-17 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-17 11:52 am (UTC)I wonder what goes through people's minds on assembly lines in Asia all the time. Hockey gloves at least are reasonably obviously some kind of sporting good, even if the person making them knows nothing about the sport. What I really wonder about are the people doing things like painting the eyeballs on cheapo sci-fi related toys. I have a little rubber stamp of Quark from DS9 for example that is made in China. The handle part is his head. What did some 47 year old line worker in Singapore who has never seen or even heard of Star Trek think of this butt-ugly, big-eared, head she had to paint eyeballs on 836,261 times?
Re:
Date: 2003-04-17 01:48 pm (UTC)Indeed
Date: 2003-04-17 12:09 pm (UTC)Re: Indeed
Date: 2003-04-17 02:04 pm (UTC)Old Phones
Date: 2003-04-17 02:11 pm (UTC)Not only that, it works during a power outage (like when the building electricity is cut off because of a fire...)
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Date: 2003-04-17 05:06 pm (UTC)a 2 year max obsolecense.
Remeber the Syquest Sparc Drive?
Remeber the Ditto Drive?
Remeber the Jazz drive?
I am there with you my 4-eyed brother...
Yes .. changing back to your old perscription ...ewww...I wanted to get AWAY from my old look thank you. The Dizzyness, the short steps, the headache.... like an ether binge
"...you look like the village drunkard in some old irisgh novel"
`hunter S Thompson
Comming from a retail sales end - I would have to say that you REALLY pay to be different. If you don't conform to easily replaceable parts and a standard glasses design..you ARE hooped.
Don't give that employee too much shit.. chances are that he was never trained properly (or authorised) by the Vendor to repair anything, give him credit for attempting to help you other than
telling you to go away.
What I find funny about our situation is that you can get sunglasses in a $ store for $2 .. so why the fark do OUR frames cost $100-200? (the lenses I can see.. custom ground an shaped)
If that happened to me .. I would use super-glue or a microbolt
to mount the leg in place rather than dish out $400 if it meant
I would loose my opportunity to travel this summer (I'm doing Burning Man). The glasses shops aren't going anywhere - but you are.
Have you looked into contacts?
I have - but I can't get them for my eyes - focal point is outside
of the eye.
Re: I am there with you my 4-eyed brother...
Date: 2003-04-17 11:44 am (UTC)I've actually done it before where I have bought sunglasses (albeit $40 ones, not $4) and had prescription lenses put in them. Those were great glasses, very unusual, and I wore them for years until they were irrepairably done-in whilst playing with a friend's toddler.
The thing with this pair is what was broken had nothing to do with the cosmetic design of the glasses. The broken screw was part of a mechanism that is common to any number of spring loaded arms, proven by the fact that I extracted a replacement from the arm of an entirely different pair of glasses, different cosmetic design, different manufacturer, same screw.
I tried contacts a few years ago and didn't like them. Way too much hassle with all the cleaning and and the annoying time restrictions ("Stay out a few extra hours? Sorry can't; my contacts are starting to burn and I don't have any saline with me."). I don't even get plastic lenses because I can be bothered to worry about what it takes to keep them from getting scratched. I've had glasses since I was three and my (bad) habits regarding lenscare are firmly entrenched.