1) No paid holidays. For every holiday that the clinic is closed—Christmas, New Years, etc.—they will have weekend “events” you’re supposed to work. Two in November and two in December, on Saturdays. There is always a “holiday social event for clients” during the same month of the clinic closing on any business day, and that is so they still make the same revenue even if they “give” you the holiday off. It’s presented as something done for the kids, but it’s all about making sure they don’t lose money even if they’re closed on a holiday.
2) The owner or one of the higher ups rolls through the clinic every so often and does a “quality assessment,” where they score the clinic on organization, cleanliness, etc. They would ding our clinic on things beyond our control. Like docking points because the waiting room wasn’t separate from the office or something like that, but they have us in a rented space that we can’t change to meet that criterion. Oh, and we were also not allowed to spend the money to make any changes. Same thing when a kid in time out broke the door to the room. Got docked for that over and over, but weren’t allowed to buy a new door.
3) They switched to digital session notes during my time there and gave every RBT a really tiny, crappy Chromebook-type laptop to use for these. Parents had to sign these notes after you discussed the session with them. My laptop broke about a year in, and they would not replace it because money. But I still had to get the notes signed. So I could either wait until the desktop in the common office was free and write my note on there (a line would form for this as more laptops broke, making it really time consuming), or I could bring my own laptop and use that.
4) We had to also submit our timesheets digitally before leaving, and wait until they had been checked by the office manager person before we could leave. Do you want to wait 20 minutes for free after work until it’s your turn to use the dinosaur desktop in the office, fill out your timesheets, and then wait some more for free until someone checks them? Then this is the company for you!
5) Did you go to college with hopes of cleaning toilets and doing dishes at work? Then RM is your best bet. They expect the staff to do housekeeping. I’m all about cleaning up what you used that day, putting away supplies, that’s totally cool. But I did not get a masters degree to clean the toilets, wash the dishes used by clients and staff, clean the microwave, vacuum, clean the bathroom floors, I could go on, because the company is too cheap to use a cleaning service. For free before you go home—that’s right, you’re not paid for the time spent cleaning. It’s not listed in the benefits package, but they will let you clean their clinic for free! They were doing some system where they gave “points” for each chore and you would get gifts cards for $10 to $30 I think, based on how many points you had for the month.
6) tuition reimbursement—you’re not getting reimbursed, it’s an interest free loan that you’ll pay back whether you stay there for the mandated amount of time after receiving it or not.
7) PTO - you get decent PTO, and maybe this has improved since I was there, but I got guilt tripped every single time I used mine.
8) If you take a day off for any reason and use PTO—doctor, vacation, sickness, anything—they will ask you when you want to reschedule those sessions/make up those hours. Again, they really hate losing revenue.
9) You’ll see some other reviews referring to BCBAs and BCaBAs doing mostly direct service (1:1 with kids, like an RBT does, rather than supervising or managing the case) and that’s because that’s how they can bill the most time possible at the higher consultant rate (BCBAs and BCaBAs get paid a little less than 3 times what RBTs make per hour from TriCare). But if a client for a BCBA or BCaBA cancels on them, rather than lose that time’s revenue RM will give that BCBA or BCaBA a session that is usually worked by an RBT. If that client has already maxed out on supervision time from a BCBA or BCaBA for the month, that means the RBT can’t work that session. So the RBT loses those hours and pay so that RM can bill more per hour for that session.
10) They tried to say that employees should take turns being off for holidays like Christmas Eve or the day before and after Thanksgiving, meaning that employees who don’t have their family nearby are expected to miss the holidays with them when it’s “their turn,” because of that darn revenue.
11) If your client cancels, they will call clients until someone agrees to come in for an extra session if they can possibly round up someone. Doesn’t matter if it’s a client you’ve ever worked with before. Doesn’t matter if you’re comfortable working with this kid you’ve never worked with or been supervised with before. If they can get someone to come in to fill that revenue slot—I mean, session—they will. And you’ll usually hear about it after the fact.
