As covered in Chapter 7, the regular rate is built from total remuneration divided by hours actually worked, and section 7(e)(2) lets certain payments fall out of that calculation because they are not compensation for hours of work at all. “Show-up” or “reporting” pay is the first of these. Under some employment agreements, an employee who reports for a scheduled shift and is not given the expected amount of work receives a guaranteed minimum number of hours' pay, typically arising on infrequent and sporadic occasions. The portion of that payment covering hours actually worked is credited as straight-time pay (pay at the employee's standard, non-overtime rate) or overtime compensation like any other pay. The extra amount above that — paid to compensate the employee for the wasted trip and to discourage employers from calling people in for only a fraction of a day — is treated as a payment not made for hours worked: it is excluded from the regular rate and cannot be credited toward overtime due. Show-up or reporting pay that state or local law mandates receives the same treatment, but only if it too is not compensation for hours worked and — as an express condition of the exclusion — is paid on an infrequent or sporadic basis.

Call-back pay is excluded from the regular rate under the same not-compensation-for-hours-worked principle as show-up pay (section 7(e)(2)), but turns on a different fact: whether the extra work was prearranged. Typically, call-back or call-out pay is a guaranteed minimum number of hours' pay for an employee who, after scheduled hours have ended and without prearrangement, responds to an employer's call to come back and perform extra work. As with show-up pay, only the amount above what the hours actually worked would have paid is excludable, and that excess cannot be credited toward overtime. The dividing line is prearrangement: the key inquiry is whether the extra work was anticipated and therefore reasonably could have been scheduled. A retailer calling an employee in after an unexpected roof leak is unprearranged and excludable; a restaurant that instead of scheduling extra Saturday-night servers routinely calls employees back to cover the same anticipated rush has prearranged the work, and any call-back pay for it is compensation that belongs in the regular rate.

A third category — extra payments similar to call-back pay — extends the same prearrangement principle to payments compensating an employee for unanticipated or insufficiently scheduled hours or shifts, including payments made under state or local scheduling laws. These include extra pay for failing to give an employee sufficient notice to report on a regular day off or outside the regular schedule; extra pay owed solely because an employee was called back before a specified rest period between shifts had expired; pay a state or local law mandates when the gap between the end of one shift and the start of the next falls short of the legally required minimum; and “predictability pay” a state or local law mandates when an employee does not receive the required notice of a schedule change. As with reporting and call-back pay, the excess above compensation for hours actually worked is excludable only while it is not prearranged; prearranged versions of any of these payments are compensation for work and belong in the regular rate.