Not enough hours Nevada

[hm86]

My wife works at (restaurant chain) as a hostess, her schedule is usually from 10-4. But, she usually only works 10-1 if not less and on more than one occasion she only worked 1 hour before it was too slow for her to go home. I was talking about it with coworkers and they said there is a law stating that you must be paid a minimum of 4 hours if your scheduled for four or more. I remember at my last job, anytime there was no work we were required to put so many hours on our time sheet because we showed up but there wasnt anything to do. Is this really a law or something?

[robb71]

I am not aware of any reporting pay requirements for Nevada.

Generally speaking it's ok to send employees home early if there is no work to perform. I understand your wife's concern. It's unfortunate. Maybe your wife could chat with the boss about being crosstrained in other areas of the restaurant. At least then she'd be more accessible to getting hours since she would not have to rely on hosting as sole option.

http://www.laborcommissioner.com/faqs.htm

[mlane58]

Robb71, you are correct that Nevada has no pay provions for reporting time.

[cbg]

Although there are a couple of states where, if you report to work and are sent home before the end of your scheduled shift, you have to be paid a minimum number of hours, Nevada is not one of those states.

She can be sent home if there is no work for her to do, and she only has to be paid for the number of hours she worked. Your co-workers are wrong.

[rainasky]

I've worked in restaurants for 12 of the 26 years that I've been on this earth and I can tell you from personal experience that a hostess is the least necessary position in the house. Unless business is booming or the wait staff is short on a particularly busy day - a hostess is pretty expendable. I agree with the above poster that she should probably try and get trained to wait tables - servers are typically much better paid than hostesses anyway.

[hm86]

its kinda hard to become a server in las vegas unless your 21 due to alcohol. But thanks for the advise.

[rainasky]

I understand that you need to be 21 to serve alcohol in the state of Nevada. I was waiting tables at the age of 14 and I never ran into a problem obtaining employment as a server just because I wasn't legally able to serve alcohol. Most employers are willing to accomodate servers who are younger than the legal age to serve alcohol. Every employer I've worked for has readily employed servers who cannot legally serve alcohol. We always had the older servers run the drinks to the table.

That aside, perhaps she could bus tables or help out in the kitchen with prep work or something? If she isn't willing to try and branch herself out in order to get more hours, then she's just going to have to deal with it - or find a different job. Like I said earlier, unless she finds an extremely busy restaurant (or a fine dining establishment - they will usually keep a host or hostess on duty even on a slow day just for appearances) she's going to run into a shortage of hours anywhere she finds a job as a hostess. And no employer is legally obligated to provide a certain number of hours to their employees. She could find herself working ONE hour per week and it would still be perfectly legal. They don't have to pay her for time she never worked.