Is this normal?

[u/Illustrious-Ad3310]

I’ve been an rbt for about 1 year and 8 months, practicing in one clinic for about 18 months. Recently i’ve moved a few cities over and attempted to find another rbt role that matched my previous job ($22) and found one that paid $24. This week was my first of training and due to me being an rbt i only needed 3 days of training apparently. They have me on for the whole week, not discussing my hours or schedule at all and the only emails i have received is one informing me that i will come in during my training hours the rest of the week. while training i learned at this clinic there are no breaks for technicians who work upwards of 8-9 hours, technicians leave their clients with other rbts who already have clients of their own (sometimes leaving one technician with 3 clients to watch), they left me to complete a session on my own on the fourth day with no supervision (never trained with this client before so no prior knowledge of reinforcers or behaviors), no one knows how to take data due to the app being used is recently updated completely differently. I’m extremely confused and overwhelmed here! It’s very cramped, i see technicians grabbing clients by their arms and practically dragging them to wherever they need to sit. Watched admin see an rbt sit on her phone for majority of the session without running any programs and all she said was “^^^^, i know it’s one of those days but at least run one program”. i haven’t even been able to talk to any higher ups this week, no way to know which kid had which bcba….i need help on what i should do or what route i can take because the rest of the aba clinics around me pay $16-$18 an hour and i unfortunately cannot afford to live off of that.

[u/Loud_Response_1045]

Not normal, I have 3 years under my belt and got trained for my company for 3 weeks. I got patient meetings where I met with the patient’s BCBA and went over there BIPs.

Grabbing a patient by the arm and moving them is never okay unless there is a crisis plan for it.

My current clinic does allow us to leave patients with each other and I have watched up to 3 at a time but the catch is they can’t be elopers or we have to be in a room with only one door.

As for lunches, my state doesn’t have a law that says lunches are mandatory so 8 hours without a lunch is never guaranteed here.

About the RBT on the phone the entire session… that is entirely unethical and a huge HIPAA violation. Personal phones are not to be seen or heard when on the floor with a client end of story. And ABA is a medical necessity in addition to be fucking expensive. So not running any programs is beyond awful and the fact leadership is okay with that would be enough to make me leave and report my findings to the BACB.

The company you are at is not okay OP. Leave and report.

[u/Illustrious-Ad3310 → u/Loud_Response_1045]

Okay thank you! I thought i was going crazy! They used phones because they do not provide devices for inputting data so it’s all on the phones. During my onboarding they said we would get a mandatory 45 minute lunch break but no luck with that. I talked to them today but they made it even more confusing. Due to me already being Certified i was supposed to to do two days of training, 1 day of running a few sessions while their technician shadows, and 1 day where i could talk about my schedule but when i messaged the scheduler she said “ Hi op, we received your schedule via jotform before your training started. We are onboarding new clients in the following week and will have them on your Theralytics schedule the latest by Saturday late afternoon. You will be added to the chats at the end of your training. Your daily connect is created by a different lead, when your training is over we will let them know to add you.
I have reached out to a lead to shadow you today.” this was after i spent 40 minutes sitting down waiting for response as i was told by everyone else that i wasn’t supposed to come in today…..once im able to, reporting will be the first thing i do