Static educational checklist — not a calculator. No punch inputs, no spread-minute math, no live premium engine. Spot common spread-of-hours / long-day red flags under New York hospitality wage order 12 NYCRR § 146-1.6 and adjacent long-day / split overlays. Distinct from continuous-workday & report-time, on-call waiting, travel-time, meal/rest, tip-credit, recordkeeping, child-labor, and final-paycheck pages.
Baseline (NY hospitality spread)
Spread of hours is the interval from the beginning to the end of the employee’s workday — working time plus meals plus every off-duty gap in between. On each day that interval exceeds 10 hours, restaurants and all-year hotels generally owe one extra hour at the basic minimum wage (not the employee’s regular rate, and not FLSA overtime). Exactly 10 hours of spread is not a trigger. This page does not compute minutes or premiums.
Checklist — spread-of-hours & long-day red flags
Hours worked confused with spread. Flag stubs or policies that treat “6 hours on the floor” as a short day when first punch to last out spans 12–15 hours with a long unpaid gap. Spread asks how long the day lasted, not how many hours were worked.
Meals and off-duty gaps excluded from the interval. Flag timekeeping that measures only paid punches and drops lunch / mid-day relief when figuring whether the day exceeded 10 hours of spread. Gaps still count toward the interval even when they are not hours worked.
“Equals 10 hours” treated as a premium day. Flag auto-rules that pay the extra hour at exactly 10:00 of spread. The hospitality wage order pays when spread exceeds 10 — ten hours even is no premium; ten hours and one minute is.
Premium paid at regular rate or folded into OT. Flag systems that multiply the extra hour by the cook’s $20–$40 rate, or that shove the spread dollar into the FLSA regular rate. Hospitality spread is generally one hour at basic minimum wage and is not a payment for time worked for OT purposes.
Wrong wage order (hospitality vs miscellaneous). Flag “one rule fits all” NY setups that ignore § 146-1.6 hospitality vs § 142-2.4 miscellaneous (where an offset / higher-rate analysis can differ). Restaurant / all-year hotel vs other industries is not interchangeable.
Spread mixed up with call-in / reporting-time floors. Flag policies that label every short show-up a “spread” issue, or that skip call-in pay because a long-day premium already ran. Call-in / reporting-time and spread answer different questions.
Tip-credit / cash-wage floor applied to the spread hour. Flag tipped-employee setups that try to satisfy the extra hour with a tip-credit cash wage instead of the full basic minimum. Hospitality spread is generally owed at the basic minimum hourly rate.
Sister-state long-day / split overlays ignored. Flag NY-only reviews for multi-state operators. Related (but distinct) doctrines include CT restaurant/mercantile reporting-time, DC split-shift premiums, and other state call-in floors — always check the stricter local rule.