microbiology technician

laboratory technician

receiver

microbiologist

chemistry technician

Mérieux NutriSciences

Prepare to work hard and efficiently and long hours, although you will be paid fairly (overtime). The sample volume can often be too high for the lab’s current capacity in terms of staffing and experience level. Management is working with project managers from France (company is headquartered in France) to address some of these issues but aside from diverting work load to other labs and occasionally holding samples for the next day, not much has changed in the past few months since it was announced that our lab would be the pilot program in the United States for better forecasting and preparing for the daily sample volume, which has already been implemented in the European labs, successfully as we’re told. As a microbiology lab technician you will most likely start out in the “sample prep” area of the lab weighing out food products all day. As you learn more and begin to get some experience under your belt you will progress to working with environmental samples, usually swabs and sponges that need to be hydrated with enrichment media and then incubated. You can also learn how to do microbiological plating: taking the weighed out samples and plating them onto or into microbiological media to be incubated. The work is very repetitive and detail oriented, like most lab work. You work individually on your own samples but also as a team to get all the samples done for the day. You are eligible for annual merit raises after working for more than a year, provided you have satisfactory performance reviews. I think my first annual merit raise was around 75 or 80 cents more per hour, so nothing spectacular. If you become proficient in three or more areas in the lab, such as sample prep, plating, raw room (raw samples and environmental samples), PCR, assays, transfers, diagnostics (reading the plates and inoculated media), etc., you can be promoted to Micro 1, which is short for Microbiologist I, which comes with a modest pay increase from $19.50/hour to $21.50/hour. Because of the amount of overtime that is required, my annual compensation last year as a Micro Lab Tech making $19.50/hour was around $55k, working 50+ hours a week every week, some weeks even 60+ hours. Supervisors start at around $60-$65k annual, but are considered exempt and ineligible for overtime, so factor that into your calculations if you are thinking of applying for a supervisory position: you could be working 50-60+ hours/week and not making much more than an hourly employee that is paid $19.50/hour plus overtime. One thing that is nice about the Minnetonka lab is that the current supervisors and management jump in and help with daily operations when needed, even if it means washing dishes and loading/unloading the autoclaves, helping out sample receiving receive the daily packages and samples from our clients, helping out the media production team, helping sample prep weigh out samples, helping plating, and doing diagnostics, assays, transfers, PCR, etc. instead of sitting at their desks all day. This is mainly out of necessity: we are having trouble keeping people and there is high turnover, and this is most likely due to work-balance coupled with relatively inexperienced (read: recent college grads) workers who are not accustomed to working long hours and managing such a high volume workload each day. This is a good place to gain experience working in a lab and learning many different scientific techniques. The Micro Lab Technician role is an entry level position and no prior lab experience is necessary, although it certainly helps. Basic math skills are required, as you deal with dilution ratios and sample weights all day. Coworkers help each other out when learning new methods and tasks. In my experience it is a positive work environment, although it can get stressful due to daily workload. Pro tip: apply directly on Merieux’s website, not via a staffing agency. The starting pay is the same whether you are hired through a staffing agency or not, but you will not be eligible for Merieux benefits if you are hired through a recruiting agency, which include health insurance, dental, vision, life insurance, STD and LTD, and 401k matching (fully vested after working a minimum of TWO YEARS though). Another thing to know is that the typical schedule is rotating: you will work Monday-Friday the first week and then Tuesday-Saturday the next week, and then back again to Monday-Friday. This means that you will oscillate between having 1 day off and 3 days off in a row each week. Accommodations to scheduling can be made, but the majority of Micro Lab Techs work this set schedule. The start time is usually 11 AM for most Micro Lab Techs, and you clock out anywhere between 7 PM (very rare) to as late as midnight, although the average clock out time the past year has been around 10 PM, although management is trying to get better at this and get us out earlier at a more reasonable time. You will earn plenty of PTO with a max accrual of 160 hours per year, but our lab only allows up to 2 people off at the same time, with some exceptions, so you need to plan your paid time off strategically and get your PTO requests in as early as possible. In the beginning when you are first hired, it is a lot of computer work training and SOP reading. You will only be allowed to do limited things in the lab until you are fully trained, which can take weeks to months, so it can be boring at first. Be patient, and bug your supervisors about getting trained off on things so you can start actually helping out in the lab. This is a regulated lab with a lot of rules and procedures and policies, so you have to be OK with following the rules and quality management system. The best thing about working at Merieux is probably the people you work with, and the challenging work if you are motivated by that. We listen to music all day in the lab and get free soda and beverages. Occasionally they treat us to free lunch. The management isn’t horrible to work with, although there are a select few personalities that sometimes rub people the wrong way. I don’t have much experience working with senior leadership, but it has been difficult for our lab to get senior leadership to listen to the needs of our lab, especially due to the workload and variable staffing with high turnover. The most difficult part of the job is managing your daily workload and learning how to work the most efficiently without compromising safety and quality, and every now and then dealing with a difficult personality and the occasional micromanagement. But for the most part, Micro Lab Techs are trusted to do their work once fully trained and the work becomes more autonomous and easier the more you gain experience. In the beginning it can seem overwhelming but everyone helps each other out so you’re not totally lost. The two biggest things the company could improve are employee retention and better managing the daily workload among the variable staffing levels and experience. 

ONLY REVIEW THAT YOU NEED FOR FSC

Ok starter job out of college but no more than a year and a half at most. Learn the basic GLP, aseptic technique, and lab skills you can then get the heck out of there. If you are lucky, you might be able to work on some interesting projects but don't be fooled, you are just there for the labor. Data is not shared with you. Results, decisions, and project scheduling do not involve you at all if you work in the lab. They are more than willing to let you work >12 hrs everyday until the work is done, even if it means that they want you to redo work if the results "don't make sense". Trust me, frustrations run high when this occurs because they don't share data with the lab, so they don't explain why you have to repeat work time and time again. This type of project management leads to technicians not caring about the work/projects and can lead to data manipulation. If mistakes occur (which is unavoidable) management just blames lab workers and bad talks them in their meetings. 

Unfortunately, this company is operated in a way that makes people lives very miserable. Hard work and dedication are not recognized here. The slackers are always given leniency, and hard work is not rewarded. This creates an unfair and resentful attitude. There is no care for career path and progression. There's no appreciation for good workers, which causes high turnover of the good workers. The bad workers stay, which is why the supervisors and managers are bad, as they've worked there forever.

Management is a complete joke and is filled with people that are honestly unfit for their roles. Supervisors are terrible at supervising, they just scold and yell at you to get the work finished. When problems happen, they just blame the lab, but don't try to fix the process. They don't even check any of the work themselves. The general manager cares only about saving money, even if it's at the employees expense. Most of the time, we have no idea if our general manager is even in the building as she doesn't interact with anyone. She even enters and exits through a separate entry than everyone else. The GM likes to act like she is unaware of the issues going on, but she's just trying to deflect blame off herself and onto people below her...great leadership lol

Promotions and wages are another ridiculous aspect of working at FSC. They are often unfair and don't reflect actual work done. They just pick people that they can control and manipulate to promote. Raises are pathetic, less than 3% every year, which is determined by the GM...which again doesn't interact with the lab. Targeting occurs with raises, as people they don't like get a lower raise than others despite doing the same work. Pay is unfair to say the least.

As bad as management is, HR allows this to happen. There is an internal employee satisfaction survey that is taken twice a year to determine employee happiness and FSC always scores the lowest in the whole network by a lot. Many serious and embarrassing accusations have been brought to HRs attention with little or no action...such as favoritism, targeting, unfair pay, discrimination, and RACISM! It's been like this for years and nothing has changed.

All in all, if you desperately need a job by all means take this but for goodness sake continue looking for another job. Learn the basic skills and throw it on your resume. I've seen people mentally and emotionally break working at FSC, don't be one of them. Many good workers come and go from there, don't waste your talent long term. A lot of people just settle for this job and company, it consumes and changes them into negative and bitter people. Good people and workers deserve better.

To all new graduates and interns: please do NOT waste your time on this company. Merieux Nutrisciences Food Science Center (FSC) is a complete joke. It is a vicious working environment that 95 % of the employees face with frustration every day. Overall, this is a very bad place with favoritism and bad management.

1)Incompetent supervisors 
	Operations supervisors in FSC do not know how to operate the lab and should be removed from their positions. A good supervisor should lead a team to achieve goals with a high degree of technical proficiency. However, operations supervisors at FSC treat people who work under them as slaves, and there is a huge animosity that will never be resolved. These supervisors would spend all the efforts yelling at people for trifles or some things that they can finish while everyone is busy at their work.
	Daily workload is also a joke. Supervisors arrange daily work lists, but they usually add on more things to be finished when it is close to the end of the day. If you finish your daily workload earlier than other people you have to work on other projects, which are assigned to different people. It is very rare that you will work only 40 hours a week. 

2)Ridiculous job responsibilities
	At FSC, the job responsibilities of all positions (lab assistant, microbiologist, research microbiologist, research lead, etc) are the same. However, there are big differences in the wages for different titles. That means your wage can be low, and you are responsible for doing work of higher positions. Although research positions are open at this place, jobs at FSC do not actually do research. Your daily work will be the same. Supervisors will not share results with you willingly. To them, all the positions (lab assistant, microbiologist, research microbiologist, research lead, etc) are just their slaves to complete the work so that they can show something to the clients.

3)Favoritism 
	The turnover rate at FSC is high, and the general manager (GM) should be responsible for this. The GM at FSC saw so many employees leave this company and so many complaints about supervisors. Yet, the turnover rate remains high because the GM does not want to rectify the situations. GM showed clear preference toward operations supervisors over other employees, and many employees felt frustrated and decided to leave the company. Among so many Merieux locations in the USA, employees at FSC are the least happiest according to the internal employee satisfaction survey. 

4) Feeble H&R
	The H&R is another pathetic part of this company. After reporting so many issues to the H&R, most of the employees feel that the H&R is biased toward supervisors. Every incident will end up being the employer's fault, and all the supervisors can get away with it. 


A typical day would proceed as follows;

Arrive at work at either 8:30am or 9:30am (my start times varied between weekdays and saturdays). Start by checking emails from clients regarding incoming sample shipments, schedule pick ups required by clients, clean off work stations and restock supplies for our department. If there was time in the morning we would also pre-log (entering data into the system) any paperwork that was emailed to us in advance, to help facilitate a smoother day.

Once FedEx and UPS had arrived, we would begin unpacking and cataloging the samples, making sure the following things were correct for each sample analysis request form (SARF) sent with the samples: That the information matched between the SARF and the physical sample, that the testing was properly, if at all, marked. That there was enough sample to proceed with all the testing they asked of us. This process is repeated for every package and set of samples we received all day. 

If there was any mistakes or other issues we would need to contact the client to clarify requirements and discuss possible alternatives if needed.

After that was the data entry portion.

At the end of the day we would package up and ship any samples that needed to be sent to other labs in our network.

This Job taught me data entry skills, as well as general office skills, and helped refine my already learned customer service skills. We were taught to use critical thinking to solve problems and to investigate any mistakes that were made, to find and stop the root causes of mistakes.

Management was probably the hardest thing about the job, they had unreasonable expectations for us as a department, and made us all aware of not only our own progress (or lack there of) towards the expectations but made us well aware of everyone else's success and failure rates.

This job provides an excellent way for you to learn out of college and gain needed skills to translate your degree into real-world experience. You will have amazing coworkers, and will be provided continuous training.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of downsides. They put a massive strain on you and your co-workers to finish an unimaginable amount of work in a single shift, all in an undersized and understaffed lab. This leads to regular 10-14 hour shifts, and more than one of us have had minor panic attacks at work due to this. By the end of the day, all of us are ready to snap at each other.

While we have been told multiple times that the higher-ups have been trying to fix this, the only thing we have really seen is the occasional free lunch to apologize for another late night. A few tweaks were made to the way we work, but it did very little, and only for certain departments. Sometimes the tweaks actually slowed the lab down. Free food and bandage-policies can't fix another day you had almost no sleep and missed out on being there with your family. This job has zero life-work balance. You essentially live at the lab.

Also, be ready to self-train. While they provide readings and basic training, you are very much on your own after that, and the readings and training rarely teach you how to apply what they are speaking of in the actual lab. In all honesty, it's your co-workers, if they have a moment and see you struggling, that tend to help you figure things out. This has a downside too, though. If they were taught wrong by someone, you will be too.

If you need a job that gets you experience, it is a good fit. With that said, applier beware.

Don't work here.
Always understaffed and overworked.   Equipment in poor state.  Lab always dirty.
The training of new employees is nearly non-exhistant, little to no on the job training.

Local management ranged from either disinterested to completely incompetent.  "Leaders" seem to come and go whenever they feel like, while the avg tech works 50-60hrs per week year-round for substandard pay and medical benefits that are quite poor.

The true problems here are the leadership.
The local leadership will lie to your face, repeatedly, concerning raises or promotions.  The local managements job is to dupe people into thinking they are working toward a goal, only to pull the rug out from under you after 6, 9, or 12 months later, citing some technicality that makes you ineligible, to suppress career development and therefore suppress wages.  The average worker is left facing endless drudgery with an incompetent or absent leadership with no light at the end of the tunnel.  You, the technician are an expendable piece of equipment; to be intentionally used up and replaced.

The corporate types can afford the money to expand the lab, but cannot staff the place fully or pay a decent wage.  So there's an even bigger, unstaffed lab.
The corporate leadership are completely out of touch with reality; expecting a productivity per worker that is not attainable under the conditions they have imposed.
As a result, corners must be cut; the quality of work suffers, the lab isnt properly cleaned, and the people are constantly at each others throats because the work culture is so toxic.  If you do something right its worth nothing. If you do something wrong you're given strikes.  
So the system is structured that you can only get behind, never ahead.
Workplace politics plays a big part at this lab, and its unfortunately just another reason to not work here.

Overall, MXNS is a good place to gain experience. If you’re fresh out of school with a science degree and looking to build your resume, this place is perfect. The work isn’t difficult, the rules are fairly lenient, and the people are great. 

It’s hard to find a good work life balance due to the nature of the work and how the company is structured. You start at 10AM and will work until all of the samples are processed. Most of the time that will be between 6 and 8. Typically closer to 8. You’ll have more than enough opportunities for overtime but if you are trying to avoid working extra hours, it’s very difficult. 

The work is very team oriented, you’ll do tasks solo but in the end you’re working towards the common goal of finishing the sample volume. They are currently lacking management in Columbus due to high turnover so at the time of this review there won’t be much structure. But that allows for opportunities to progress quickly. 

The starting pay has increased over the years. 3 years ago it was $14/hr and it has increased to $17/hr. There’s a step rate and after a year you should be closer to $19 as long as you do your job properly and come to work. 

The people are very nice. You’ll listen to music as you work, have personal conversations, and have generally a good time. Most people get along and try to make the best out of longer hours. 

A lot of reviews highlight the negatives because people are more inclined to speak their mind when they’ve had a bad experience. I enjoyed my time there and had the opportunity to take a role in upper management but decided 50 hour work weeks didn’t fit my desired lifestyle. 

the average working time is around 10 - 11+ hours every day (6 a.m. - 5:30ish p.m.; 5/7 days out of the week) due to the fact that this company forces you to stay behind once your job is finished and "help" others in their department so that everyone can leave at the same time more or less. although this principle sounds great at first, in the long run it's tiresome, seeing that other departments work much harder and are forced to stay behind to help others finish their work. as if that's not enough, you are still forced to stay behind once again to help others clean their department so that the next day, it will be easier on them, regardless of the fact that the department has nothing to do with your assigned position. now can you leave? wrong. you MUST check out with your assigned supervisor, and only upon their approval you may be free to clock out.  

additionally, working long hours you tend to notice how the supervisors, crammed into small office, sit on computers for the majority of day, laughing, talking, enjoying their time, while everyone else works tirelessly to finish their work only to have the supervisor(s) to waltz around the place to take a break from their long, arduous gossip to only distract others from their work by asking meaningless questions. 

now on to a lighter note, what did make the job at least bearable were some of the co-workers; many of them truly do wish the best for you and it was extremely pleasant to have such people to work with. 

all-in-all, I highly advise any would-be applicant to avoid this place like Covid-19 and save yourself the despair. 

I worked as a chemistry tech and the problems started right away. I was rushed in training because my trainer was working multiple benches and had no time for me. There is a generous PTO policy that you are never allowed to take advantage of. There were instances where a worker would ask for just a Friday off weeks in advance and be told "we will wait and see what it looks like that Thursday afternoon." If they overpromise to a client, you get to come in an extra day or get in huge trouble if you said no. Then they will train you on multiple methods and expect you to do both in a day, regardless of how long that will take you.

Safety issues abound, this place has had several fires. Management is a favorites club and they are micromanagers for sure. They hire people with bachelor's degrees and above for their chemist roles and treat you like you cannot be trusted with a single decision about your workflow. The pay is terrible and they dangle promotions in front of you by making you take on extra unpaid responsibilities and then not delivering the raise and promotion.

I only worked there for less than two years and would drive home crying. The only benefit I got from this place was experience, so I could get a better job! So if you find yourself inside that building, take advantage of all the training they will foist upon you, bite the bullet for 1-2 years, and get out of there! Lots of other labs in the area are FILLED with former employees from this lab and will know you can withstand anything.

The job itself is tedious. The two main aspects of the job are opening the coolers or boxes of samples to make sure that they are all there and imputing the required tests into the LIMS software. There is a huge learning curve with the LIMS software and you aren't really trained in it well. You are sternly talked to after making mistakes, despite not actually learning the procedure properly. Things like if client X orders Y test they actually mean they want Z test. But you only gain these things from experience. 

There is high turn over and it is understaffed resulting in long hours. I never worked 8 hours the entire time I worked there. I was pulling 10-11 hour days most of the time. You are on your feet all day and you only get a half an hour lunch break when the lab can spare you to leave, usually around 2-3pm. I had  4-4:30 "lunch breaks" a few times which is ridiculous after starting work at 8:30. There is free soda in the break room and occasionally they order pizza. 

The alternated work week monday-friday and then tuesday-saturday is unpleasant given the consistent 50+ hour weeks. You were unable to go home until all of the work was done for the day, which meant that you had no idea what time you were getting off when you clocked in. I would only suggest this role if it is your only option and would suggest applying for jobs throughout your employment. If you have a science background sample receiving is going to be boring for you and there is no opportunity to move departments.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Microbiology technician 148 salaries reported	$18.70 per hour
Laboratory technician 36 salaries reported	$19.23 per hour
Receiver 44 salaries reported	$18.27 per hour
Microbiologist 31 salaries reported	$21.33 per hour
Chemistry technician 28 salaries reported	$18.61 per hour

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