u/Many-Sail-1579

I’m a newer BCBA and honestly the clinic I currently work at has to be one of the most bizarre work environments I’ve ever experienced.

When I signed my contract, it only covered very basic employment terms and vaguely mentioned benefits without really explaining them. I later found out after starting that there is no 401(k), even though I was initially told there was. Not ideal, but whatever.

What really shocked me was learning that the only paid holidays off are Thanksgiving and Christmas. Every other federal holiday, we are expected to work. On top of that, shifts are typically 9–10 hours long and you are expected to be there the entire time.

The clinic has around 60 clients and only 2 BCBAs. I currently have 30-35 clients honestly I’m not sure because I keep getting more without my knowledge. I’ve been at the company for 3 months and still haven’t even met all of my clients.

I’m also assigned around 5–10 direct sessions per week on top of everything else. RBTs are not getting the supervision they need because my caseload is so high that there genuinely is not enough time in the day to provide proper support and quality care.

I finally went to management and explained my concerns, and the response I got was basically: “Just do the best you can and make sure you hit your billables.” That response told me everything I needed to know about what they actually care about.

Management is disorganized, support is basically nonexistent, and the whole environment feels unsustainable. I already feel burned out and guilty because I’m a new BCBA and don’t want to look like I’m job hopping, but this workload does not feel manageable for anyone.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Is this becoming normal in ABA or is this as bad as it feels? Any advice?

I have been renting the same house for the past 3 years, and starting about 2 years ago we began receiving packages addressed to the same name over and over again. Every time one arrived, I would bring it back to UPS or mark it as not belonging to anyone at this address, but within a week it would somehow end up back at our front door again.

What makes it even stranger is that the sender address is always different, but the person it’s being shipped to is always the exact same name. I tried searching the name online and couldn’t find any real person in my state connected to it.

After months of this continuing with nobody ever showing up to pick the packages up, I eventually opened them because I honestly wanted to figure out what was going on. The first two packages contained factory reset laptops that worked perfectly. After that, another package had an Xbox, and the next two contained PS5 consoles. None of them included controllers or power cords just the systems themselves.

The packages usually show up about every 3 months, and they are always expensive electronics. No one has ever come looking for them, contacted us, or tried to retrieve them. This has now been happening consistently for about 2 full years and I still have no idea why.

Has this happened to anyone else before? I genuinely cannot figure out what is going on.