Calling Someone a 'Manager' Doesn't Make Them Exempt. The Duties Test Has Entered the Chat.

I overheard the phrase 'we'll just make them salaried so we don't have to pay overtime' and had to lie down on the cool tile of the compliance basement for a moment to collect myself. Friends. That is not how any of this works.

The title is not the test, the duties are

You can call someone a Shift Manager, a Lead Ninja, a Director of First Impressions — the title is decorative. Whether a role is exempt from overtime turns on actual job duties and salary under the FLSA, not on what's printed on the business card. A 'manager' who spends ninety percent of the day doing the same line work as the people they 'manage' is wearing a costume, and the Department of Labor has seen the costume before.

The salary threshold is a moving target

Exemption has both a duties prong and a salary-level prong, and that salary number moves — sometimes upward, sometimes through litigation, sometimes in a way that reclassifies a chunk of your workforce while you weren't paying attention. If your last classification review was 'a while ago,' you may already be out of compliance and simply not know it yet.

'We'll just make everyone salaried' — no

Salaried does not equal exempt. You can absolutely have salaried non-exempt employees who are still owed overtime. Paying a flat salary doesn't magically extinguish the obligation to pay for hours worked past forty; it just makes the eventual back-pay calculation more annoying for whoever does it at 11 p.m.

The back-pay math that ruins quarters

Misclassification doesn't get cheaper with age — it compounds. Unpaid overtime, sometimes doubled as liquidated damages, reaching back years, multiplied by every employee in the misclassified group. It's the specific kind of number that turns 'we'll fix it later' into a board meeting nobody enjoys.

Run an honest duties test on every exempt role, write down why each one qualifies, and revisit it when the thresholds move. Boring? Deeply. Cheaper than the alternative? By several zeroes. And — say it with me now — consult your employment attorney. 📋