Being early is usually a good thing. Being required to arrive early and then waiting outside a locked workplace raises an important wage and hour question.

TL;DR: A federal appeals court revived a grocery employee’s unpaid-wage claims after she alleged that employees had to arrive fifteen minutes before their listed shifts but sometimes couldn’t enter or clock in. Required waiting time can be paid time even before productive work begins. The court also declined to dismiss the recurring fifteen-minute waits as too trivial to count.

📄 Read the court’s decision.