A couple weeks ago I got a blood test. I walked into the test center, which was staffed by a single person. I waited in line (there was one person in front of me), and told the person my name. She walked me over to a chair, drew enough blood for a whole bunch of tests, and that was it. I was in and out in 12 minutes (I timed it), and it was almost completely painless.
This wasn't Theranos. It was "Lab Corporation", an utterly non-unicornish testing center, and the local branch was staffed by a competent phlebotomist. It turns out that, once you stick a tiny IV needle in, you can draw a few vials of blood very quickly and painlessly.
In contrast, I once had a test at Theranos. The tech poked my finger with the magic lance (which stung more than the IV needle), put the little magic capillary collection widget over the drop of blood on my finger, and squeezed REALLY FUCKING HARD, repeatedly. My finger tingled weirdly for a few hours, because the REALLY FUCKING HARD squeeze hurt and probably broke a few capillaries. And the process took considerably longer than the blood draw at Lab Corporation. See, a little needle with a vacutainer at the other end draws quite a few mL of blood very easily, but a little finger prick struggles for more than a drop or two.
(Next time you give blood and get the finger-prick hematocrit test first, look at the tiny amount of blood that they get. Then imagine the rather large multiple of that amount that you'd need to fill the little Theranos collection widget. Ouch!)
I suppose if I were afraid of needles, then maybe the squeeze-the-finger-really-hard approach would have been an acceptable idea.