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&ldquo;I Blew Off My Exempt Duties&rdquo; Insufficient To Establish Jury Question. Slackers everywhere may have shed a tear in their Doritos on Friday after reading the Eleventh Circuit&rsquo;s decision in <a href="https://employmentclassactionreport.bakerhostetlerblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2013/12/Reyes-decision.pdf">Reyes v. Goya Foods, Inc., Case No. 13-12827 (11th Cir. 12/6/13)</a>.&nbsp; The plaintiff in Reyes sought to bring an FLSA collective action against the defendant on behalf of himself and other similarly situated &ldquo;sales brokers&rdquo; that the defendant employed.&nbsp; The sales brokers were responsible for promoting and selling the employer&rsquo;s products at retail food outlets within their territory.&nbsp; At trial, the employer called two sales brokers as witnesses who testified that they were given weekly sales goals, rarely reported to the defendant&rsquo;s offices, set their own schedules and regularly sought to secure additional orders and better product placements from the outlets for which they were responsible. Here&rsquo;s the interesting part of the case.&nbsp; Based on the Eleventh Circuit&rsquo;s opinion, the plaintiff appears to have done little to contest this evidence.&nbsp; Instead, he testified that he personally was pretty much satisfied to wipe down shelves and rotate inventory, and wasn&rsquo;t too interested in the sales/promotion part of his job.&nbsp; (Oddly enough, he filed the case after being fired.&nbsp; Go figure.)&nbsp; According to the plaintiff, he did not have discretion in regard to the pricing of the items he sold, so he wasn&rsquo;t a salesman. Affirming a directed verdict in Goya&rsquo;s favor, the Eleventh Circuit found that the plaintiff&rsquo;s arguments didn&rsquo;t amount to a hill of beans.&nbsp; (C&rsquo;mon, we&rsquo;ve certainly used worse puns on this blog.)&nbsp; In affirming the judgment, the Eleventh Circuit noted that, &ldquo;although Reyes may have personally spent little time promoting Goya products -- his position as a sales broker at Goya qualified him as an &lsquo;outside salesman&rsquo; under the FLSA.&rdquo;&nbsp; Slip Op. at 5, emphasis added. The Reyes decision reflects the importance of evidence demonstrating the employer&rsquo;s expectations from employees in exempt positions.&nbsp; Job descriptions are certainly helpful in this regard.&nbsp; Even more crucial, however, is evidence that the employer holds employees accountable for actually performing the exempt duties listed in a job description as the primary focus of their position.&nbsp; In Reyes, that evidence came from other employees in the job classification.&nbsp; But, such evidence can just as easily be found in performance reviews, self-evaluations, offer letters, raise letters, status reports and a variety of other sources. The Bottom Line: Evidence that an employer holds exempt employees accountable for actually performing exempt duties can be critical.

Eleventh Circuit Affirms Employer’s Directed Verdict Based On FLSA Outside Sales Exemption