optometrist

optical assistant

customer service representative

store manager

recruiter

Vision Express

I am most grateful to work for Vision Express as an Optical Assistant and it's been a great experience all around and I care so much for the company. For anyone looking to join as an Optical Assistant at Vision Express, I'd say 100% go for it. Learn about the human eye, have a great time working in a field where your expert knowledge is appreciated by customers to help tailor their experience and feel rewarded helping people out on a day to day!

However, there are some serious let downs that leave a lot of my team and I completely exhausted and overwhelmed. 

At our store, we are proud to say we work our socks off, dealing with a high volume of great and varied customers. There is never any hesitation to approach and assist anybody. We love being able to get a job done with confidence and satisfaction for both the customer and staff member. 

We do however find it increasingly impossible to deal with answering the phones, ordering in contact lenses and helping stressed customers. Our phones are constantly ringing rendering us unable to get a moment to think. All 4 of us (average amount of staff in a day) will be dealing with separate customers who are in the store. All appointments need thorough pre-screening which is vital for the patients to get the service that they are promised, all walk-ins must be approached, all questions are being answered face to face... yet we are getting so many complaints from people for not getting to the phone on time. We simply cannot please everyone when we absolutely could be on our way to doing so otherwise!

Contact lens queries are, to put it simply, breaking our backs. We are on the front-lines with the pressure of hitting targets in sales and helping people who are stood right in front of us and queueing out the door but we are too often stuck on the phone having to deal with things that are mostly out of our hands. 

Furthermore, the hardware is very aged from what I've seen and from what I understand, across the board. The computers are too slow to meet the demand of our fast paced store. Ordering contact lenses are an important part of the job and are done in heaps at a slugs pace leaving room for errors and confusion when we have to constantly stop and start the process, dealing with customers who are in and out of the store. 

I believe there needs to be an overhaul in hardware, potentially software to keep up with Specsavers, a review into the contact lens ordering system and a long hard look into how phone calls are delegated to stores. So much of these questions from customers could be shared out into a call centre, or anywhere else, who knows... why should an Optical Assistant be the one to sort it out on my small wage?

The company is a shambles. Over worked and underpaid. You do more than the professional  dispensing opticians and you get paid pennies. As for higher management, there’s not a lot to say except they expect far too much and don’t offer any support. Every store is short staffed due to sickness/COVID etc. Customer service is non existent! We can’t deliver good service because despite it being COVID we are expected to test just as much as we did before COVID and do all the extra cleaning on top of all the normal jobs! If you don’t hit your KPI targets you are scolded, even though most of the time you don’t have the staff in place to achieve this due to too much staff shortages. 
This was a highly stressful environment to work in! 
People where literally signed of with work related stress throughout the whole company, and the rest of the staff were left to get on with it.
Tech centre are also over worked, can’t get through the jobs they are given due to lack of staff. A lot of the time they make mistakes and you have to deal with the backlash from angry customers. 
The company wanted to change the culture and pay more attention to staff needs so they invented a 2 hour long conference , which ended up basically telling us they had a new marketing campaign faced by a mole! New branding costs hundreds of thousands to produce! Staff were told they’d get a pay rise but I think it was just in line with the government pay rise anyway. No one was impressed, staff weren’t listened to, and the company didn’t change its culture. If anything it alienated people more and the sense from the top dogs was if you don’t like it you can leave…. Fair enough. 
If the executives that get paid the big bucks,  could figure out that all they need to do is have a healthy work environment by having a proper work life balance without all the company apps being downloaded into your personal phone, they might have less people signed off with work related stress. If they thought about how much goes into being an employee and what you actually do at store level, they might pay their staff decent wages! After all it is the little guys in the store that make the money for the company, with little or no thanks. It’s quite disheartening knowing you aren’t valued as a member of staff, you are  just a number!
As for employing new staff, the company needs to give the stores time to train and help these people rather than expecting them to learn on the job! It causes unnecessary stress. 

Pay
I was informed during the interview that the pay was over £9 an hour and that there was fantastic career progression. I was also told that it was a 35 hour contract. 
Upon being offered the job, I was told that I would be on 27 hours, non-neogotiable, but I accepted it because I was desperate and thought it would be worth it. I was informed that I would often be working weekends, which wasn't a problem.
Then, a week or so after starting, my contract came through which said I would be paid minimum wage of £8.91. I asked about when this would go up and was told that once I passed my first level in a few months time it would go up to £9.04. This was less than I was paid for my previous unskilled job but it was too late. 

Shifts
I quickly found out that not only would I be working weekends, which was fine, but that I would have to work every single Saturday and Sunday as the other members of staff refused to work the weekends themselves. I brought this up to the manager, saying that I couldn't work every weekend all the time, and was told I "agreed to it" and that the only way I might get weekends off is if I book holiday for them, and even then it might be rejected. 

Career Progression
I spoke to my colleagues, all of whom had been working with the company for a long time, and all were still being paid just barely above minimum wage. They had told me that they hadn't managed to get past the first level of pay rises with the company in that time, and that any work they did towards these "qualifications" was usually just thrown in the back of a cupboard somewhere and ignored. 

Other 
My colleagues would also give myself and the other new member of staff all the jobs they didn't want to do, and one even openly complained that she didn't want to do a certain job because "thats what THEY'RE here for", rudely gesturing towards myself and the other new starter.

Needless to say, I started looking for another job around a month and a half in, and have since left. 

The work itself was fine but rarely rewarding and often tedious, and the optoms for the store were lovely but that's just about everything positive I can say about the place unfortunately. Wouldn't recommend vision express at all as a place to work, you'd be much better off anywhere else.

Within weeks of starting at VE it became very stressful. Always put on double clinics, just two of us! Sales targets were unrealistic and you were constantly understaffed. Left without a manager for months at a time. Nothing you do is ever good enough, they always want more. Phone rings off the hook, customers always angry, storming into store shouting that they have been ringing constantly and no one answers the phones. As I told them, it annoys us just as much not being able to answer the phone due to being so short staffed. They really need to consider a call centre as it would ease the pressure in all the stores and provide customers with the service they deserve both on the phone and in store. We were often kept on the phone dealing with issues (mainly contact lens problems) when we were already stretched beyond our limits in store. Regional manager Peena was far from helpful, never heard a good word about her from anyone in the company. Saw it for myself when I finally had the misfortune of meeting her in person. Never provided us with help even when we were in a right mess with no staff and no manager. She still wanted the figures though!! Training courses are good and provide you with some helpful knowledge. Also a free pair of glasses each year and vouchers for friends and family. Uniform is so cheap and frumpy. If you walk too fast in the trousers you may set on fire! Could be a good place to work if you are in the right store with staff and a permanent, decent manager. I found that when I met people on the training courses the people who worked in the JV stores were appreciated, had staff and were happy in their job. Those of us working in the uk stores were the opposite. Speaks volumes!

Very busy store. Lack of sequence on training , they throw you out  in the store and worse to answer calls without any information about the job, ( because they want to be talking to each other, or to take time to be in their hidden mobiles phones ) yes,  to answer calls , where you never have the answer, because you haven't even finished your  long  module of training and have not much information.  Everyone wants to be the manager and tell you what to do, mostly what they don't want to do they'll push to you .

   I heard clients complaining about the speed that eye tests are done, because opticians  have % commissions.  They also want to convince ALL the staff wear glasses, as a " marketing "
   Some staff will be behind you when you are talking to a client to hear " how you are doing" In  reality they are nobody, only staff like others but in their " Sick Mental imagination "  they will be asking you about clients  that come to talk to you:  what this client wanted ?  what ?  you need to tell me !! 
 Unprofessionalism and sick  childish behavior mostly, many small groups, that pretend that they don't  see clients, but wave to you to , to answer the phone and go to the client. They make sometimes big groups at the front counter laughing and dont even care when a client comes in and ignore them, but  when you are talking  in a normal way with a colleague the mad big group is going to tell to STOP TALKING!.....    
Well and much more, that's not worth of naming here.

"That was actually a case to take  some  of this people to court"  for certain situation, let's call like this,   but it would be very long and difficult case, so I let it go and rather live my life in a non miserable place.

I found working at Vision Express extremely difficult; I had never worked in Optics before and was really looking forward to the challenge, as well as leaving the horrendous job I had beforehand. When I first started at VE I thought I would enjoy it as there was a lot to learn, but as time passed, I was basically left to my own devices and simply take customers in for their screening before appointments and try to explain to them (before they became hysterical) that the air pressure test really wasn't going to hurt. I was shown a few times how to use the screening equipment and that was it, job done. As well as struggling with this aspect of the job, I was left to man the reception desk without having a clue what I was talking about when customers asked questions or wanted to book appointments on the very complicated software used by the company, it really was bad. When asking for help from management I was usually responded with a tut and a few rolls of the eyes. I hated working here. It was very clique, as it was a small team, and in the end I just walked out and have never looked back. The day I did this and walked back home, I instantly felt lighter.
On a positive side, the hours were good, standard 9-5, although this involved weekend work. If you were serious about optics as a future, I think they would have invested in you as an individual, although, saying that, I used to find the store manager's 08:30 AM pep talk about how 'we can drive sales today' not encouraging in the slightest, actually the opposite.

After working here for 3 years & being told 'the grass isn't greener on the other side' I decided it was time to leave as I was not being paid enough to feel so low & unproductive through my days.
 There is no path of progression so it's a job just to keep you going if there is no plan of a career. In addition there really isn't much training provided or when you ask for something to keep you occupied while employed you get ignored & pushed to just care about sales rather than gaining any knowledge.
Management is terrible. While working the job I had never felt so depressed as well as having previous members of staff leave for the same reason. Management would literally harass  you & take digs at you knowing you feel uncomfortable working the job with them. Taking it further to someone above was pointless & came to the point I had no option to leave as it was all to much. You were made out to be stupid & having the blame of something everyday. Being told of like a child In front of other members of staff to embarrass you was a regular. 
Furthermore it was poorly staffed & the team would be pushed to do more than we should have to, making the job no way enjoyable & rushed. Customer complaints would be happening as we had no time for detail. Staff turnover was increasing & in charge did not want to pay for another member of the teams wage as it was seen as coming out of there pocket.

I now have another job in optics & have become an appreciated & valued member of staff in which I found out it really was greener on the other side.

I’ve been with the company for almost three years and because I don’t fit their image, I’m still on minimum wage despite being fully trained. Obviously due to the pandemic, I can’t leave just now. The job is incredibly stressful and the focus is on sales (despite being told it’s not about the actual money KPIs). Constant emails from management telling us what we are doing wrong, never anything positive. CEO sent out a publication saying we were all getting a pay rise due to our hard work during this lockdown, then we find out that the minimum wage as set by the government was going up anyway so they just put it to the minimum they could legally give us. There is no support for the optical Assistants despite being the ones who do all the sales, any issues with a store manager are always brushed aside and the assistant is made out to be incompetent. We were told to watch a 2 hour long conference telling us how they are disappointed colleagues are unhappy with how things are, despite not actually taking action and listening to what we have to say. 

And the tech centre is the worst thing about the business. The focus is always on telling us on the shop floor to be better, but the tech centre can do no wrong, despite constantly breaking frames, causing delays and lying to us when we are asking where a customer order is. The remake system is the worst and is costing the company thousands. Just let us cancel an order, you don’t need to make the glasses when we’ve told you they are wrong. 

My experience working as a store manager was deeply disappointing and ultimately damaging to my wellbeing. From early on, I felt that the culture in my region was toxic and unsupportive. Instead of fostering an inclusive and respectful environment, I often felt singled out and uncomfortable being myself at work.

There were moments where comments were made about my personality and identity that left me feeling judged rather than supported. At times, I was told—directly or indirectly—that I needed to “tone down” aspects of who I am, which was incredibly disheartening. When I asked reasonable questions about staffing decisions and cuts to hours, I was met with dismissive or mocking responses rather than professional explanations. I was also told I was “built differently,” but not in a way that felt motivating or constructive—more like a criticism of who I was rather than my performance.

The environment became increasingly stressful, and instead of receiving guidance or constructive feedback, I felt pushed out. The threat of being placed on a performance plan made the situation feel less like support and more like pressure. Over time, the atmosphere became so negative that it genuinely affected my mental health and happiness.

In the end, I left feeling bullied, undervalued, and drained. My hope is that the company takes steps to create a more inclusive, respectful, and supportive culture for future employees.

I worked in Nottingham for Vision Express on night shift for just one pound per hour difference (9,21), morning shift is 8,21. It’s all about giving the best for the most slavery wage back, same as the majority of the places where you can imagine to work for. They want you to focus, you can’t speak with your colleagues for 5 minutes and be a fokin friendly human being that you get warned, unless you are polish, if you are polish you are considered special and you are allowed to talk for all the time and no one will tell you anything. There is a rule to speak in English of course, unless you are polish. I met extraordinary people, some of them are my actual besties and I met very judgemental people as well I would say forget to work at VE if you are not polish because they will be in a coalition to kick you the funk out. Dress codes are fokin stupid, everyone look like is going to a funeral, bright colours are banned, which is blasfemy for me.  Forget to have a personality in this place, you must act like a number that scans other thousands of numbers every foking day. Job is easy once you got what to do. Some supervisors are great people and some of them act like they have no life over VE which is very sad. Extra hours are not convenient because with the taxes at the end you get the same of a normal work day, if you want to try to work for vision express then go for it but I personally don't like to work around racists and fake people, be careful to those who  smile at you because maybe they are just waiting to backstab you.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Optometrist 12 salaries reported	£45,583 per year
Optical assistant 8 salaries reported	£18,500 per year
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	£24,235 per year
Store manager 3 salaries reported	£30,667 per year
Recruiter 3 salaries reported	£35,000 per year

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