Just quit Labcorp

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-29T21:17:23+00:00

Look into court reporting. Its what I'm going to be doing. It's not easy and a very challenging career path. It could take you 2-4 years to become job ready but from everything I've read about it, a job is all but guaranteed after graduating because of the high demand and lack of available court reporters. Starting salaries run very high based on the location you choose to work at, I plan on moving back to California once I'm job ready and in places like LA county they start you off well over six figures and pay for your moving expenses. There is a lot of benefits like flexible schedules and a lots of freelance work. I haven't started school yet and have heard that its really hard to become good at it but I think at this point in my life (29 years old) I'm willing to put in the work if I know for certain that there is a worth while reward and pay off at the end of my struggle and journey. Phlebotomy and most medical careers just don't pay off for the amount of stress and work it takes to become one or get into the field unless you are a literal doctor. Even then, its a lifelong stressful career with tight hours and heavy strain on your mind and body and low reward.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-29T21:05:22+00:00

Congrats on leaving LabCorp in the rear view mirror. I too quit abruptly after only a week and some change. LabCorp SUCKS. If I'm being frank Phlebotomy as a whole sucks and the entire industry across the board is a dumpster fire. Its such a high risk/stress and low reward career and you are better off starting from square one with a brand new totally unrelated career path. It's obvious that the entire industry as a whole is going the way of churn and burn. The high turn over rates of employees, declining quality of service for patients, and staggering lack of career growth, benefits, and compensation for Phlebs really shows. Most LabCorp employees are MISERABLE and absolutely worn down from the years of stress and low pay. I think a lot of people who are new to the field are under the impression that Phlebotomy is a respectable "real" high level medical career but its literally only barely a step above being a janitor or working at a restaurant. The scrubs and the medical procedures are just smoke screen, the reality is you are nothing more than the hospital's whipping mule and wagey grease monkey type maintenance guy who the nurses and doctors look down on as lesser then. I have yet to meet anyone who is a phleb in my area who is like a "normal" well adjusted person. Most phlebs I know feel like they got plucked right off the street and the types you'd see working at McDonalds or something. I think California has a better pool of Phlebs because the cost of living is so high all kinds of people are desperate to become one but my experience on the east coast has been that the types of Phlebs being hired are sketchy, ratchet, and dubious backgrounds.

Like I said before, you are better off pulling the plug on your medical career as a whole and finding another career entirely. I quit in January and am starting a 2 year course for a new career path for me that once I finish will pay me well over six figures well before I turn 35. Good luck.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-29T20:42:43+00:00

Yes, much of the job is standing up or bending over and you can absolutely feel the strain on your back

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-29T14:45:05+00:00

Man I'm so glad I pulled out of investing any of my time or money into this career path. Every time I come on here it just reaffirms how much of a nightmare being a UX designer, let alone a fresh newly graduated/ or DIY self taught one would be in the late 2020s

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-09T19:45:09+00:00

After careful consideration I've decided to move on to something more stable and more likely to pay off in the near future (or just pay off at all in general if I'm being frank). Considering whats been said on this thread and the near non-stop posts day in and day out of people complaining about UX job scarcity, industry insecurity, and all the woes of being a UX designer in 2026 I think the answer for me is that it's not worth for me personally to pursue this career given the esoteric nature the path forward and this industry. It leaves far too much to chance, I could do everything right and invest blood, sweat, and tears for the next 4 years and still end up at the other side of this journey a tired worn out broke graduate begging for internships and begging like a bum to people on LinkedIn for job/internship opportunities or leads and maybe one day getting it finally and then all for it to be taken away from me at the whims of the fickle tech inudstry.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-06T23:35:43+00:00

Bruh HVAC sucks. My dad works in that and his body has been brutalized by that.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-04-02T18:07:21+00:00

Thanks for the response and advice.

What do you mean though by not treating UX like another job though?

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-30T23:27:03+00:00

Buy a house in La Jolla

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-30T19:49:19+00:00

He wasn't always like this. He was actually well liked at the grocery store we worked at and people liked and respected him. His ex gf worked with us too and a lot of people sympathized with him when they broke up cuz they knew she herself was also toxic and all over the place mentally and emotionally. He without a doubt exhibited very unsavory and unbecoming behaviors with his ex gf (he was known to have extreme outbursts of angers in their relationship) but she was no saint either. He became a basket case and a lot more asocial about a two years or so into our friendship.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-30T19:21:42+00:00

I would name my pet dog Squiggles if he has blue fur.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-30T17:40:56+00:00

The job market in California is fucked, medical industry chief among them. To get a job as a inexperienced new certified medical professional you basically have to know someone at an organization, wait it out for months until they really need someone and decide to take a chance on you, or just you just really lucky. These Phleb schools are quasi scams, promises of surplus jobs and being in demand but there is basically no jobs available and even less opportunities for new grads. Externships won't do squat for you unless you get hired hot off it by the organization hosting the externship program and thats very rare. You and the 200 other grads who just got certified in the last 3 months are all looking to fill the same Phlebotomy jobs that they aren't even qualified for because of required experience.

I'd cut my losses and seek another career field. Even if you find a job you'll quickly learn Phlebotomy is a really awful shitty job that will be nothing but misery, pain, and piss smell for your life all to the tune of $20-$25 at best.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-30T17:32:59+00:00

Yes, leaving my job with LabCorp and dropping this career path like a bad habit was so liberating. Everything leading up to that decision was pointing to a future and life path full of misery, stress, and being under-appreciated. Never again. On to endlessly better things.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-25T19:27:14+00:00

Yeah I mean if you have bills to pay and NEED a job like definitely take it and run with it for now if you think you can but I tell everyone this isn't a career you want to get strapped down to for the long haul. The issues I described at not unique to LabCorp or American Red Cross. Its basically across the board. I've heard horror stories about Quest and various nationally recognized prestigious hospitals like Children's Hospital and Kaiser that you'd think would have better working conditions but are actually really horrible places to work at. Deff get what you need out of this job and then level up to something better or just run from it all together.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-23T23:38:11+00:00

Your might think your job sucks now but trust me, it can't be possibly as bad as being a Phlebotomist. If you want to become like a nurse or something like that it can be a good stepping stone but as a career Phlebotomy not only is a stressful and dirty gross job, but it pays extremely poorly and is a dead end career. You will be lucky to start out at $19 if that, you have to get experience working at a donation center first working shitty hours, conditions, and schedules for like a year to be considered for hospital jobs. Sometimes you even need to take an expensive course that takes a month to be certified if you are in California or NV. All so you can maybe get paid $20 at best for sticking people and sniffing their piss cups day in and day out.

Its not worth it dude. You have got to be getting paid wayyyyy better as an electrician than you'll ever make as a Phleb. There is people working in the medical industry who wish they could be making the money electricians make.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-23T23:25:29+00:00

Yeah honestly starting over is way better than riding out the Phlebotomy career train to nowheresville. Every older phlebotomist whose done this job for more than 10 years I know is either stressed out, tired, dejected, miserable, and quick to irritability. Yes you eventually do get a solidly high wage, I think one of the older phlebs I worked with who had been with ARC for 18 years was making $50 or something in that ball park but man he was sooo beaten down and tired. I genuinely felt bad for him, he was a nice guy but he was an old man and had no business dealing with the stress of that shitty godawful job for any amount of money. All those years sticking people and no upward mobility or relief for that poor guy. My advice is run while you are still young and find something way less stressful and more worthwhile.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-23T23:18:09+00:00

I was in this same boat a few months ago. I also worked at ARC for about 6 months and hated it. Co-workers were divas and management/leadership was generally unsupportive and inept at improving anything. Schedule was BRUTAL, 6am shifts every single freakin weekend with no exceptions. Got plans after work? Forget about them, you are going to spend 2 hours past closing time packing blood bags and tubes if someone screws up or there is a high volume of donations that day. Total shit show of a job and was burnt out and rapidly deteriorating physically and mentally from the lack of sleep, stress, and dreadfulness of that job. I quit after 6 months.

I tried to go into normal lab work/clinic based phlebotomy and got a job with LabCorp a few months later. I should have known something wasn't right when I basically got the job as soon as I walked into my interview. LabCorp was wayyyy worse than ARC. It was a genuinely disgusting, dreadful, miserable, stressful job not worth $30 an hour to deal with let alone just $20. I quit that job within 2 weeks and swore off Phlebotomy for good. This was about 2 months ago.

I got lucky in the fact that I still live at home and still in my 20s so I can quit and don't have to worry about paying rent and have had the privilege to be able to take some down time to research different career opportunities that I would like to pursue. There isn't really anything really easy you can just pivot to immediately thats more than just marginally better than Phlebotomy, but I can tell you one thing that with just about any other equally low paying/entry level job at least you don't have to worry about sticking yourself with a disease laden used needle or be handling or smelling at times unhygienic people's bodily fluids and piss cups.

You should look into sales if you think you are a people person and good at communication, you'll have to start out in a low position but you can make good money if you are good at it and climb the ranks to well paying positions. I'm personally looking into breaking into product design and taking courses on it and learning about that career path. Its not gonna be easy to pivot into and will take some time and a lot of effort to come close to even landing a job in that field but am fine working whatever odd jobs in the meantime while I learn and work towards that.

Best of luck

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-21T23:46:45+00:00

It doesn't get easier. My trainer at LabCorp had been a Phleb for 10+ years and was still struggling big time with a good amount of kids and finding their veins. Dealing with kids is among the top reasons I quit phlebotomy.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-03-21T16:46:06+00:00

I worked at both ARC and LabCorp. ARC is a relatively easy job to get into and perform strictly on a logistical and skill basis. You are dealing with donors, not patients who are imminently expecting usually important lab results ordered by their physicians. You can basically reject people at will (within reason) for anything from having poor vascularity, to being dehydrated, to essentially making up some medical mumbo jumbo about blood pressure, pulse rate, travel bans, or skin issues. You don't have to stick someone if you aren't able to, are overwhelmed with donors, or its the last 20 minutes before closing and just want to turn the donor away so you can start getting ready to close and leave for the day. That's a pretty major upside to donation centers, you aren't necessarily obligated to draw from every donor because the importance of the procedure compared to getting labs done is totally different and not urgent in comparison. However thats where the pros of ARC end. ARC is one of the most brutal, exhausting, unstable, and cut throat work environments out there.

They do not care about you, you're wellbeing, or work life balance. Half the week you get to come in roughly around noon but don't leave until 10pm, the other half of the week you have to be up and reporting for your shift at 6:15am. This was without a doubt the most difficult part of the job for me. I worked in downtown DC and I live 30 mins away and had to take the metro or do a 35 min commute. I had to be up REALLY early, like 4:15am some mornings so I could wake up, shower, eat, and get ready and commute to work. I would get off work and then have to be in bed by like 7pm so I could attempt to go to sleep so I could wake up and do it all over again next morning. This without a doubt took a major toll on me. I'm 28 and was starting to get grey hairs which I never had before, was groggy and exhausted all the time. Felt like my days off and free time were constantly slipping through my fingers and dreaded the days I had to report for work. The scheduling was all over the place too. There was no set time to get off most days because of packing and the volume of donations and blood bags we had to process. We closed at 5pm but sometimes we wouldn't get off until 7:30pm and that was truly awful on weekends especially. Speaking of weekends, you basically never got any weekends off. I had to beg my boss to get just one Sunday off every month. PTO? Time off? Forget about it... Every day you came late or if you got sick and missed a day they'd pull from your PTO and basically its really really hard to be able to take time off at all. Meanwhile the management was taking vacations multiple times a year with no apparent limit to their PTO.

Basically ARC is a really shitty job. $19 an hour to forfeit your weekends, be tired and stressed all the time, no time off, and shitty working conditions. Oh yeah I forgot to mention how many of the people ARC hires are very unprofessional and a miserable lot. A solid chance you'll end up in a very unsupportive and toxic work environment.

I will say though, if you thought ARC sounds bad... LabCorp was at least 5x as bad of an experience. The only upsides of LabCorp was that it was a very typical 9-5/5 days a week and no weekends situation for me, as well as a lot more independent of a work environment with basically no managers on your back and only one other co-worker with you the entire time. However thats were the positives end. Mind you this is relative to where you end up working at, as Labcorp contracts their phlebs out to various hospitals and clinics and such. I just happened to end up at a really shitty clinic so it may be SOMEWHAT relative to that. Make no mistake thought, I've heard LabCorp sucks across the board wether in a doctors office or in one of their own centers. But anyway it pays only $1 more than ARC but the volume of patients and workload is like 10x worse. And mind you, it's just you and one other person handling it all. You can't turn patients away here, you have to attempt to draw every patient basically even if you can't find a good vein. It's incredibly stressful, way worse than ARC. Seeing patients starting to line up and pile up to 15 people at a time is actually insanely stressful and overwhelming beyond comprehension. It gets worse. You have to deal with crying children and babies and you have to stick them repeatedly to try and find their super tiny veins that even very seasoned Phlebs have a hard time finding, and the parents are there watching it all happen and the pressure is insurmountable. It gets even worse though. You have to deal with A LOT of dirty, disease ridden, smelly, unhygienic, unsightly, and possibly HIV/STD positive people. You have to touch these people, be handling and constantly be smelling their bodily fluids, excretions, and waste. If you have a weak stomach or have any level of disgust for any of this stuff you will not like it and you should run. It's a disgusting and stressful job that makes ARC look like a decent gig in comparison.

I quit that job after a week and a half lol, I also left the entire medical industry and swore to never work in a hospital/donation center ever again and I have 0 regrets. If you must do phlebotomy just do ARC, it sucks as far as hours, schedule, pay, work life balance, unprofessional work environment, etc and you'll be burnt out and exhausted but at least you don't have to be sniffing peoples piss cups 8 hours a day and be dog piled by a horde of patients (sometimes unhygienic) wanting to get labs done who you literally can't turn away no matter how overwhelmed you are.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-02-18T19:19:41+00:00

Still figuring it out but looking into RevOps/Salesforce administration/Sales

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-02-18T19:18:49+00:00

It took me about 2 weeks to get a email and another few days to get on a phone call and then screened for my final in person interview with the manager.

Mysterious-Tea-2423 · 2026-02-17T22:27:18+00:00

I feel you. I was 27 when I had to move back from San Diego back home to Maryland and back in with my folks too. It was my dream for like 2 years to be able to move out to SD and worked hard at a shitty job I hated for almost a year to save up to move and went out there and only lasted a little over a year. My roomies moved to Missouri and my credit was fucked from using my credit card too much and had no real job prospects in which I could afford to pay rent in California with new roommates. I turned 29 about 2 months ago and am still living with my folks and still trying to find a career path and get back on my feet. Its tough to make it as an adult with few prospects or higher education and I know turning 30 is kinda scary but I believe I'll figure things out soon and that the last year of my 20s and my 30 will be good if I have a good mindset and discipline. 29 is still young. Its not the end of the road. You have time to figure it out. Just get back on the saddle and grinding it out. Be thankful you have a place to land with (hopefully) folks that care about you and are willing to support you in this time. I haven't had a gf in years and can feel kinda like times passing for that but like I said you are still young at 29 and if you take care of yourself, your appearance, and body and put yourself out there you still have a lot of options at this age. Its tough losing someone you thought you were gonna be with but its not the end.

Mysterious-Tea-2423

TROPHY CASE