After reading Judy Lea’s new column – From the High Street, I could not help chuckle when I read that she has never met an optometrist working night shifts. In the mid-1970s while working for a multiple in Coventry I indeed worked with several optometrists who worked late into the night.
The practice had a contract with Jaguar/Daimler whereby an optometrist and myself would attend the Jaguar car plant on Thursday mornings and the Daimler engine plant on Thursday afternoons.
Here we would be working in the medical centre alongside the nurses. Following eye examinations I would be dispensing a range of spectacles both fashion and industrial eyewear. We then decided to cover the night shift workers and returned to Jaguar in the early evening and to Daimler in the late evening. We would regularly work Thursdays from 8am till midnight.
