[rprasad]

The key phrase, of course, is that sales people are "usually" but not always exempt employees.

Actions speak louder than words, and treating a purported-exempt employee as a non-exempt employee (i.e., compensating them based on hours worked, or docking pay for not working specific hours) is pretty much all you need to do (as an employer) for the employee to be classified as non-exempt. The laws, and especially the NLRB administrative decisions, favor the employees in this regard.

The "expectations" bit doesn't matter in this case, because the specific actions of Groupon make those industry-standard expectations irrelevant. It's about what Groupon did, not what everyone else does.

Once Groupon began treating the sales staff as non-exempt employees, they became non-exempt employees, and Groupon became obligated to compensate them for time-and-a-half overtime.

Based on the facts currently available in the linked article and other sources online, I am saying that Groupon would lose if it gets to a hearing. But chances are better than 99% that they'll settle (or go bankrupt before the case gets anywhere in the court system).

[tptacek]

I don't really have an opinion about any of this. All I'm saying is, if you want to read tea leaves on how much this filing has set the whole Groupon sales force on fire, it's helpful to know that it's taking advantage of a technicality.