I am over 40 and was fully informed by my doctor that I would require reading glasses after surgery. While I had no problem with using reading glasses, I was not prepared for what happens when I am at work. If I am talking to a coworking who is standing several feet away and then glance down the hallway, my long range vision is blurry. Often it will take many minutes for the long range vison to return. As you can imagine, this results in almost an entire day of out-of-focus vision. Is this normal?

Ask your doctor to consider "accommodative spasm". It's really too complex to explain in this forum. We see this once in a while and can be quite disturbing with a story similar to yours.
Good luck.

In line with Dr. Ofner's response, many people who are in their early 40's (just starting to need reading glasses) are still able to read fairly well without glasses while straining a bit. As a result of this straining, they have temporary blur when trying to look farther away. I've encountered quite afew non-LASIK patients who have reported this.
In fact, after long periods of operating with a microscope, I get this phenomenon too. I think that if you allow yourself to be dependent on glasses for near that you should have less of a focusing problem.
Good Luck, Dean Hu