Our Glasses always Have Flexible Prices 镜价无常

By Ruth W.Gee ■贾宇琰 选注

John Andrews had had to wear glasses ever since he was a small boy, so, shortly before the time when he was to leave school, his parents suggested that he might train to be an optician,1 so that he could help other people with their eyes.
John did not have any strong feelings about what he wanted to do, so he agreed and started a course of training with the intention of becoming an optician. He found the work interesting, and did not have any trouble in qualifying at the end of the course.2 The next problem was to find a steady3 job.

He looked at the advertisements in suitable journals, applied for a number of the situations offered, and at last managed to get one in the town where he lived,4 so one Monday morning he set off5 by bus for his new work.

The owner of the optician's shop6 where he had been accepted was an old man, and he had another assistant and a secretary.

The first time that John tested a customer's eyes,7 the owner of the shop watched carefully to make sure that he knew what to do, and he was very satisfied with everything that John did, except that John did not know anything about prices.

"We'll discuss that at lunchtime," he said to John quietly.8

While John had been studying at college, he had read several articles and letters in the newspapers about arguments over the cost of glasses. The government had been accusing opticians of charging far too much for them, and had been threatening to bring in laws to control their prices,9 so John was curious to know what the owner of the shop would have to say about them.

At lunchtime, when they closed for an hour, the owner of the shop said to John, "Now, we'd better have a chat with reference to10 our charges for glasses, so that you know what to say to customers. In this shop we expect everyone to pay a fair price for what he or she gets, so when you have tested someone's eyes, and they have chosen the kind of lenses and frames11 they would like to have, and they want to know how much they will cost, you should say, for example, '￡54'."

"While you are saying this, you should watch the customer's face carefully, and if he or she does not seem frightened by this price, you should add, 'That's the price of the frame. The lenses cost ￡54 more.'"

"If the customer still does not look as if he or she is worried, you should add, 'For each lens'."

1. 他的父母建议他可以去学习当一名配镜验光师。train在这里作不及物动词，是“受训练，受教育”的意思；optician/=p#ti12n/: 配镜师。
2. 结业时他没怎么费劲就通过了考试。
3. steady:（工作）固定的，稳定的。
4. 他查看了相关报纸上的广告，去应聘了很多职位，最后他在自己住的镇上找到了一份工作。manage to do sth.: 设法做到。注意manage强调“做到了”，而try to do sth.则着重表示“努力去做”。
5. set off: 出发，启程。
6. 眼镜店。optician在这里指“眼镜商”。
7. 给顾客验光。
8. quietly: 在暗中，私底下。
9. 政府一直都在指责眼镜商们要价太高，并已宣称要制订新的法令以控制眼镜价格。bring in: 提出（法案等）。
10. with reference to: 关于，就……而论。
11. lens: 镜片；frames: 眼镜框（注意是复数形式）。