Legal must-knows for a new restaurant manager: minors, breaks, overtime, harassment and retaliation

This is part 7 of 7 in our series Your first year as a restaurant manager. If you're new to it, start with part 1, your first 30 days.

As a manager, the law is part of your shift. You write the schedule a 15-year-old works, you see who's still wiping tables after clocking out, and you're the person an employee tells when a coworker won't stop making comments.

This post covers five areas of federal law, quoted from the official sources. States and cities often add stricter rules, and the stricter rule wins; your state's pages are linked at the end.

This is general information, not legal advice. Sources were checked on October 5, 2026.

Why it's your job: management's duty

On work done outside a shift, the federal hours-worked rules say: "In all such cases it is the duty of the management to exercise its control and see that the work is not performed if it does not want it to be performed. It cannot sit back and accept the benefits without compensating for them. The mere promulgation of a rule against such work is not enough." (29 CFR 785.13)

On sexual harassment between coworkers, the EEOC's guidelines (whose principles, a footnote says, "continue to apply to race, color, religion or national origin") say an employer is responsible "where the employer (or its agents or supervisory employees) knows or should have known of the conduct, unless it can show that it took immediate and appropriate corrective action." (29 CFR 1604.11(d))

In practice: what you see and what you're told, the business is treated as knowing.

1. Teen workers: hours and equipment

Hours for 14- and 15-year-olds. Federal rules confine their work to these periods (29 CFR 570.35(a)):

• "Outside of school hours;"
• "Not more than 40 hours in any 1 week when school is not in session;"
• "Not more than 18 hours in any 1 week when school is in session;"
• "Not more than 8 hours in any 1 day when school is not in session;"
• "Not more than 3 hours in any 1 day when school is in session, including Fridays;"
• "Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. in any 1 day, except during the summer (June 1 through Labor Day) when the evening hour will be 9 p.m."

16 and 17. The Department of Labor's restaurant fact sheet says "Sixteen- and 17-year-olds may be employed for unlimited hours in any occupation other than those declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor." (DOL Fact Sheet #2A) Many states set limits.

Equipment. For power-driven meat slicers, grinders, commercial mixers and certain bakery machines, the same fact sheet says: "Employees under 18 years of age are not permitted to operate, feed, set-up, adjust, repair, or clean any of these machines or their disassembled parts." For 14- and 15-year-olds there's more: "They may not perform any baking activities," and "They may not work in freezers or meat coolers, but they may occasionally enter a freezer momentarily to retrieve items."

So the slicer-cleaning task can't go to a 17-year-old, and a 15-year-old's summer shift can't run past 9 pm.

2. Breaks

Federal law doesn't require them. The Department of Labor says it directly: "Federal law does not require lunch or coffee breaks." (DOL, breaks and meal periods) Many states require breaks, for minors or for everyone.

But the breaks you give have rules. Short breaks are paid: "when employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about 5 to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks as compensable work hours" (same page). A meal period can be unpaid only if the person is really off: "The employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purposes of eating regular meals," and "The employee is not relieved if he is required to perform any duties, whether active or inactive, while eating." (29 CFR 785.19(a))

So a cashier eating lunch at the register "in case it gets busy" isn't on an unpaid break.

3. Overtime and the workweek

The workweek is fixed. "An employee's workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours—seven consecutive 24-hour periods." (29 CFR 778.105) Find out when yours starts; it may not be Monday.

Each week counts on its own. "The Act takes a single workweek as its standard and does not permit averaging of hours over 2 or more weeks." (29 CFR 778.104) A 30-hour week doesn't cancel out a 50-hour one. Covered non-exempt employees are owed "overtime pay, at time and one half the regular rate, for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek" (DOL Fact Sheet #77A).

Off the clock is still work. "Work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time." (29 CFR 785.11) The closer who clocks out and then finishes the mopping, or the opener who sets up before punching in, is working, and the management-duty rule above says a written rule against it isn't enough. You have to stop it.

Where this bites a manager: approving a swap or a cover that takes someone past 40, and "just finish up" after the punch. Our post on time clock, breaks and overtime mistakes covers rounding and early clock-ins.

4. Harassment: when someone tells you

The EEOC lists who can be a harasser: "The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, an agent of the employer, a co-worker, or a non-employee." It also asks employees to come to you: "Employees should also report harassment to management at an early stage to prevent its escalation." (EEOC, harassment; the page notes that its information "is being reviewed for compliance with the law and executive orders and will be revised.")

Your own conduct carries even more weight. The same page explains that when a supervisor's harassment creates a hostile work environment, "the employer can avoid liability only if it can prove that: 1) it reasonably tried to prevent and promptly correct the harassing behavior; and 2) the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer."

When someone brings you a complaint:

1. Listen and write it down the same day, in their words, with dates.
2. Don't promise total secrecy; share it only with the people who need to know.
3. Tell the owner the same day, and follow your handbook's complaint process.
4. Separate people if needed without disadvantaging the person who complained.

Our guide to handling conflict between staff (coming Nov 9) has the full complaint process. Title VII covers employers with "15 or more employees" (EEOC, same page), but many state and local laws reach smaller businesses.

5. Retaliation

Wage complaints. Section 15(a)(3) of the Fair Labor Standards Act makes it a violation to "discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee because such employee has filed any complaint or instituted or caused to be instituted any proceeding under or related to this Act" (DOL Fact Sheet #77A). The fact sheet adds: "Employees are protected regardless of whether the complaint is made orally or in writing," and "most courts have ruled that internal complaints to an employer are also protected." So "my hours are wrong," said to you at the counter, can count.

Discrimination and harassment complaints. The EEOC lists protected activity that includes "communicating with a supervisor or manager about employment discrimination, including harassment," "requesting accommodation of a disability or for a religious practice," and "asking managers or co-workers about salary information to uncover potentially discriminatory wages" (EEOC, retaliation).

Discipline is still allowed. The EEOC is clear that "Engaging in EEO activity, however, does not shield an employee from all discipline or discharge." But timing matters. Before you cut hours, change shifts or write up someone who recently complained, talk to the owner and make sure your records show the same standard applied to everyone. Our employee write-up form lists what you can't discipline people for.

Your state's rules

Federal law is the floor. Our state pages cover minimum wage, tipped wages, overtime and breaks, and our minors pages cover teen hours and jobs:

Every other state has its own pay rules page on our blog, and most have a minors page too.

Where Mays fits

• Teen hours on the schedule. With Labor law compliance on for your organization and Minors (under 18) switched on for the location, Mays reads ages from each person's Date of birth and warns when a shift breaks the federal hours limits for 14- and 15-year-olds, or the California, Florida, New York or Texas rules. Warnings never block publishing. See Scheduling minors.
• Equipment. A position's Minimum age and tasks (like Meat or deli slicer, meat grinder, patty former) under Scheduling → Positions flag a too-young person scheduled into it.
• Overtime before it happens. The web schedule's OT warnings card lists who's heading into overtime as you build. Overtime follows your payroll week, set by First period starts on under Scheduling → Settings → Pay periods. See Timesheets and pay periods.
• Missed punches. Scheduling → Time Clock flags a Missing punch-out on the pay period's Warnings tab, to fix before payroll.

What Mays doesn't check yet: minors' meal and rest breaks. And it has no private complaint channel, so keep harassment and retaliation records in your own files.

Your legal must-knows checklist

• 14- and 15-year-olds: school-day, weekly and evening limits on every schedule
• No one under 18 on slicers, mixers or other hazardous equipment, including cleaning them
• Breaks: your state's rules; short breaks paid; meal breaks fully off duty
• A fixed workweek, overtime counted week by week, swaps checked against 40
• No work before the punch-in or after the punch-out, and you stop it when you see it
• Harassment complaints written down and taken to the owner the same day
• No change to hours, shifts or discipline after a complaint without the owner

End the year knowing the rules

Teen-hour warnings, overtime as you build and missed punches flagged before payroll.

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