customer specialist

analyst

laboratory technician

customer service representative

field technician

Microbac Laboratories, Inc.

Each lab has it's "specialty" and your experience will range depending on your location, but my experience as an analyst was pretty average. It was exciting to learn my specific role and my portion of testing in the beginning, but it slowly became pretty monotonous. My managers and project manager were all fantastic and always had the analysts' best interest at heart; we were never thrown under the bus. Each manager wanted the analysts to be skilled in our testing abilities and were beyond willing to share their knowledge. They also allowed us to work without micromanaging/hovering, but were always there to help when necessary.

They have a pretty generous time-off program (10 days paid flex time and 10 days paid vacation in addition to 6 paid holidays) and pretty standard benefits, including life insurance. My managers worked hard to ensure that everyone was able to take the time off they needed/wanted and heavily advocated for work-life balance. They did not care what hours you worked so long as your work was completed. They were never upset with overtime, though I rarely had any. Workload was inconsistent; some days had absolutely nothing in-house to run, others were fast-paced and went by quickly. You can decide whether that's enticing or not. We did not have "team bonding" activities/dinners/events during or outside of work hours.

Personally, I found my passions to be outside of the scope of the lab and found another position at a different company that aligned more with my interests. Pay and not having a clear direction for growth within the lab or company were also factors. A previous employee had been there for years and hadn't received a title change (yikes). BUT, I did not leave with any bad blood. I look back on my time with Microbac fondly and with a gracious heart. 

Overall, I think this is a great company for recent college graduates to get some valuable work experience at a family business to see their degree in action.

One of the few benefits of working at Microbac is gaining experience to enhance your resume and... get a different job. Another benefit is that you may very well like people you work with, as I met many friendly individuals during my time here. 

Now on to the drawbacks. You will probably be hired with empty promises of quick advancement, pay raises, reasonable compensation, and steady work hours. Kiss that goodbye. A new hire should expect to be kept at the same pay rate for as long as possible, while amassing more responsibility, and maintaining poor employee benefits. 

The company in general, and most specific locations are managed poorly. The emphasis throughout the company is profit. Morale be damned. Stay here long enough, and half (or more) of the people you work with will quit or be fired and replaced with someone grossly under-experienced. The work is challenging at first, like any new task, but quickly becomes very monotonous. You will most likely master most of the assigned tasks within a month or two, but will be expected to continually increase efficiency and fidelity. While working there, I did the same set of about 15 tasks every day. Over and over. 

After working in two divisions over the course of three years, I hated it most of the time from about 1 month onward. I worked with a few great people, but I also dealt with a lot of idiots (from bench level up to President level). 

If you have another option of employment, TAKE IT. If not, I pity you. Hopefully your hellish existence working here will serve as a catalyst to better yourself.

While i learned a lot of great skills working at Microbac the day to day work is chaotic and very disorganized. The company does not put its lower level employees anywhere near the top of their priority list. They make it very clear that they view their employees as expendable and do not apologize for it. They do give people fresh out of college a chance but for this reason it will always be viewed as a resume builder for most people and nothing more. The workplace culture does not promote employee happiness or well being. It is all about work, work, work with no thought to how much work is put onto the individual. The only enjoyable part of the job is that for the most part your coworkers are great people and fun to be around. The hardest part of the job is that the analysts are overworked and underpaid. Weekends are required, holiday pay is not well compensated and almost all of the upper management barely knows how to do much in the lab so their is no outside help on very busy days. On top of that random quality management tasks are thrown onto the analysts on top of all the other work that needs to be done making the days even more chaotic and tiring. This is a great job for an individual fresh out of college to learn a lot about the food microbiology world and it will build you ability to work hard, multitask, and efficient because you have no choice but to adapt to all the work but it is not a company that you would want as a long time career choice.

Management could not have made the work experience any worse than it already is. But they found a way. You're overworked, underpaid, and understaffed but they don't try to help. There's a reason the turnover rate is astronomically high.

At times, you'll work well over 50 hours per week but during the winter you might be able to get it down to 40 hours if you're lucky. Management will often make you try to feel bad for not working even more than that. I don't think they believe that people have actual lives outside of work. They want your job to be your "out of work hobby" as well. 

Turnover is extremely high. All blame is put on the people quitting and the lack of introspection is amazing. Management belittles people with lower end jobs and does not respect a single worker. They hold massive grudges forever. A current manager is still angry at someone that quit 2 years ago because they didn't want to work 50 hour weeks with a long commute all for $15/hr. They look at people as commodities and your value in dollars is your value as a person. That management style is toxic and does nothing but drive labs apart. 

It's almost impossible to take days off.

Pay is terrible and there is no advancement. 

All my coworkers have been great. Everyone gets along.

Surprisingly, the CEO seems like a regular person and they implemented a bonus program no one seems to fully understand. But the top of the chain management seem nice.

Schedule is inconsistent, some days are longer than others due to volume of samples received in lab in daily basis, yet company complains about overtime.  Building manager holds employees to a higher standard than themself and fails to communicate important information to team regarding decisions they make that impact everyone else. Several departments are understaffed with an expectation that employees are supposed to be jack-of-all-trades cross trained in multiple departments to fill the voids. Complaints by employees are ignored and designated as things outside employee's control that they shouldn't be wasting their time thinking about and should instead focus on their job.  No work-life balance as employees are expected to work weekends, as a rotating shift, and if they refuse, they are told they don't have a choice and it's already been decided for them.  Management claims they care about employees and want to see them succeed, yet don't show it in impactful ways or even set up employees to fail. Management claims everyone should hold themselves accountable, yet they refuse to take responsibility for their shortcomings or issues that get pointed out and even go so far as to make questionable decisions with little regard for potential consequences.

Management is hiring people under false pretenses; hiring for one shift then switching your shift the day you start. A typical day at work is anywhere from 8-14 hour shifts in which you have no end time. Expected to work 7 days a week without breaks (no time to take breaks if you want to leave before midnight). Being sick is not allowed, management previously in trouble for adulteration of employee time cards (adding breaks when none were taken), boss leaves at 5, you stay until 12am, have witnessed employees SPENDING THE NIGHT IN THE LAB due to exhaustion and not being able to drive home. 

While working at Microbac I’ve learned what NOT to do at my new job, and what to AVOID in the future.

There is no training, no work life balance, no staff, and you will be reprimanded for not getting the work done when they know they are understaffed. 

Many roles below upper corporate management are significantly undervalued, with local laboratory staff expected to shoulder responsibilities comparable to those of corporate leaders, yet without fair compensation. This disparity creates frustration and erodes morale, as talented employees are routinely overlooked and overworked. What’s more troubling is the deep-rooted culture of nepotism that permeates the organization. Unqualified individuals are frequently promoted based on personal connections rather than merit or performance, which stifles growth and innovation. These management decisions demonstrate a clear lack of accountability and strategic foresight, preventing meaningful evolution. Rather than nurturing potential and investing in professional development, leadership appears more concerned with preserving a flawed hierarchy. This mismanagement has led to inefficiency, dissatisfaction, and an inability to adapt in a rapidly changing industry. Until these systemic issues are acknowledged and addressed, the company is unlikely to thrive or achieve lasting progress.




This job is a great opportunity to gain laboratory skills and build upon your resume. 

Unfortunately as time went on there would be days where one would be overworked due to samples coming in late (and needed to be done THAT day), media needed to be made and QC'd, and a bunch of different processes and dilutions that are required, which would equate to the analyst being overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated for the work that they would do...and interestingly enough, management and those higher up did not want to believe that the workers were overworked/underpaid/unappreciated for what they did. 

The job itself has challenges but the only rewarding part of the job is gaining those laboratory skills by only being there for a year or two and then looking for different opportunities. 

Advice: Do what you can and DO NOT always say "yes" when someone asks for you to do something on top of what you're already doing. You will only be more overworked and overburdened with not just your responsibilities but also the responsibilities of others.

Microbac doesn’t set realistic goals and their high expectations are to compensate for the people that quit or are fired. And they will drag their feet to replace any open roles, leaving it all on a few people to pick up the work of 3-4 others. It felt like a meaningful job in the beginning, but good managers and employees found better opportunities. I was consistently coming home stressed out. If you bring this up to management, you’re lucky if they’re even listening. There is no appreciation for hard work, and exceeding expectations. There’s no room for advancement, unless you’re overqualified or picked for the position. Management is the worst I’ve experienced, and they don’t care about you or your contributions. I cannot stress enough how little they care about you. The most enjoyable part of the job was my coworkers, and when they quit, they didn’t replace them. Management left employees in the dark, and eventually stopped trying to assure us things would get better. 

Management usually has little to no idea what goes on between the lower members of the team. Plus most of them are not very friendly and forthcoming. I found many of them to be very cliquey which made it even harder to integrate into the culture. The same goes for the employees. The people I most directly worked with were obsessed with seniority and were extremely cliquey. They were not welcoming and a few of them were not very kind even having worked there for a while. The company is understaffed and puts a lot of pressure on current employees to get everything done despite not having enough workers for the amount of work. The only thing that was positive are some of the other department employees and the compensation. Other than that I found the job to be overly stressful and not worth it. 

Finally the upward advancement is non existent and only occurs is someone above you leaves. This company specializes in a very niche market so it is not the best place to learn a wide range of lab skills.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer specialist 1 salary reported	$52,500 per year
Analyst 23 salaries reported	$21.08 per hour
Laboratory technician 13 salaries reported	$18.62 per hour
Customer service representative 5 salaries reported	$19.65 per hour
Field technician 9 salaries reported	$18.72 per hour

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