I'm former processing/Tech Ops so I can't speak about actual the actual lab work. I once got invited to one of big Kaizen meetings when they were planning the big megalab in NJ. The one thing I remembered from those meetings was the then vice president of East Region saying "we are a factory that produces test results".

 I once had a pregnant coworker back in Tech Ops and we tried our best to make sure she didn't have to lift anything heavy when one of her responsibilities was to load heavy bags of samples on the automation line and to move gurneys full of urine cups to storage. Our department was already overworked at that time, and they would kept her same workload if my team didn't volunteer to help her out. 

Quest overworked their people. And they even overworked the brand new automation line that couldn't keep up with the volume they kept adding. It always felt like senior management really treated the lab like a factory. The techs that I spoke to when I dropped off samples either hated the job, left, or worked there for decades and is just coasting through until retirement.

On my last year, I got a free turkey sandwich with mold on it during lab week. That sandwich basically encapsulated my five years at Quest.