Dover Street Market New York sells $500 t-shirts to the global elite, and for years, the people keeping its floors running were denied every cent of overtime the law required, because the company simply wrote “Manager” on their name tags and called it a day.

The Title Trick: How a Word on a Name Tag Became a Wage Heist

Dover Street Market New York (DSMNY) is a concept retail space operated under Comme Des Garcons, Ltd., the luxury fashion house. Inside its walls, workers carried titles like “Assistant Floor Manager,” “Floor Manager,” and “Sales Manager.” Those titles sound important. In practice, according to the workers themselves, the actual duties were entirely non-managerial.

That distinction matters enormously under federal law. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay workers 1.5 times their regular rate for every hour worked beyond 40 in a week. There is a legal exemption for genuine executive, administrative, or professional employees. DSMNY used that exemption as a weapon: give someone a title with the word “Manager” in it, classify them as exempt, pay a flat salary, and never pay overtime. The workers say that is exactly what happened to all thirteen of them.

These were not executives setting strategy in corner offices. These were the people opening the store at 9 a.m. and locking up after 8 p.m., fielding client calls during lunch, drafting end-of-day reports after their shifts technically ended, and hauling new merchandise every Tuesday and Thursday. The company collected the labor. The workers never saw the overtime.

They Worked. They Were Never Paid. The Company Knew.

The workers’ regularly scheduled week consisted of five shifts. Opening shift workers were scheduled from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Closing shift workers were scheduled from 10:15 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Five shifts at those lengths already put every one of these workers between 43.75 and 45 hours per week, purely from their posted schedule, before a single minute of extra work is added.

Then the extras pile up. Closing shift workers routinely did not leave the building until 8:00 p.m. or later. Post-work duties, including drafting and sending end-of-day reports and messaging clients, consumed approximately five additional hours per week. Receiving merchandise shipments added another three hours per week. During seasonal merchandise changeovers, workers were required to work two thirteen-hour shifts in a single week on top of their regular schedule.

And through all of it, workers were never truly off the clock during lunch. They were required to stay on the floor, attend to clients who walked in, and answer calls from management and coworkers. Under federal law, a lunch break only counts as a break if you are “completely relieved from duty.” These workers were not. That means every minute of that ostensible lunch break is legally compensable work time, and the 40-hour threshold was crossed every single week.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Measure

Consider what Curtis Hennager’s work life actually looked like. From December 2015 to August 2018, he showed up to one of New York City’s most coveted luxury retail spaces, wearing the title of Sales Manager and then Assistant Floor Manager. For over 100 weeks, according to the complaint, he worked a schedule that exceeded 40 hours every single week. For over 100 weeks, he received no overtime. The company never disputed the length of his employment. It just argued he hadn’t described his stolen wages with enough paperwork.

This is the specific cruelty of the wage theft playbook: the burden is designed to feel impossible. Courts have allowed companies to demand that workers essentially reconstruct their entire work history, week by week, before a lawsuit can even begin. The district court that first dismissed this case said the complaint was “long on generalities and short on specifics,” as if 100-plus weeks of consistent, scheduled over-40-hour workweeks was too vague a picture. A worker earning an hourly wage does not walk around with a lawyer in their pocket and a spreadsheet in their head. They trust that the law will protect them. The system was structured to punish that trust.

The lunch break violation carries its own particular indignity. These workers were told they had a lunch break. On paper, the schedule showed a break. In practice, they were required to remain on the floor, handle customers who walked in, and stay available for calls from management. Federal law is explicit: a break is only a break if you are “completely relieved from duty.” The company was collecting paid lunch-break labor from every one of these workers, every single day, and classifying it as unpaid personal time. That is not a scheduling oversight. That is a policy decision that benefits only the employer.

The seasonal changeover weeks reveal an additional layer of exploitation. Twice in 2018, workers were required to work two consecutive thirteen-hour shifts in a single week, stacked on top of their already above-40-hour regular schedule. The word “required” in the complaint is doing enormous work there. These were not voluntary extra shifts for holiday pay or bonus opportunity. They were mandatory. The company needed the work done. The workers did it. The premium pay those workers were legally owed never arrived.

That quote from the complaint is a quiet indictment of the entire situation. The workers know more evidence exists. They know the company has the timesheets, the emails, the end-of-day reports that the workers themselves were required to write after hours. The whole machine of their exploitation is documented in their employer’s own files. The company’s legal strategy was to demand the workers produce that documentation before it was even available to them, then argue the case should be thrown out because they couldn’t produce it yet. The appeals court, to its credit, saw through it.

Legal Receipts: The Court Record, Word for Word

The Company Tried to Bury These Workers in Paperwork Requirements

“The problem with the Complaint, the District Court explained, was that it ‘require[d] . . . inference upon inference to arrive at the conclusion that any given Plaintiff worked more than forty hours during at least one week when that Plaintiff was improperly classified as exempt.'” Herrera v. Comme des Garçons, Ltd., S.D.N.Y. 2022, as quoted in the Second Circuit opinion

“The level of specificity that the Defendants demand goes too far. It would generate voluminous, tedious complaints and compel plaintiffs to record their work schedules with a level of precision and care at odds with our admonition that plaintiffs in FLSA cases are not obligated ‘to keep careful records and plead their hours with mathematical precision.'” Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Abbott v. Comme Des Garcons, Ltd., October 16, 2023

“The Plaintiffs were not completely relieved from duty during lunch breaks, and were required to attend to clients on their floor if someone walked in . . . and to answer calls and questions from management or co-workers.” Second Amended Complaint, as cited in the Second Circuit opinion

“Accepting that allegation as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the Plaintiffs, we must infer that they worked during their entire eight and three-quarter- or nine-hour shift, five days a week. This allegation alone sufficiently pleads that the Plaintiffs’ regular basic workweek exceeded 40 hours per week, every week.” Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Abbott v. Comme Des Garcons, Ltd., October 16, 2023

“Although these job titles contained the term ‘Manager,’ the Plaintiffs’ actual duties were non-managerial.” Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Abbott v. Comme Des Garcons, Ltd., October 16, 2023, summarizing complaint allegations

“The Defendants also assert that the Complaint smacks of ‘group pleading.’ . . . Even assuming that the group pleading doctrine applies to FLSA claims, we are unpersuaded that it poses a problem here. The Plaintiffs allege that they were employed in one of three positions, each of which was misclassified as a managerial position and was associated with a regularly scheduled workweek of more than forty hours.” Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Abbott v. Comme Des Garcons, Ltd., October 16, 2023

Societal Impact: Who Gets Crushed When This Goes Unchecked

Economic Inequality: The Luxury Tax on Workers

Dover Street Market New York sells luxury goods to the wealthiest consumers on earth. Its retail concept is a partnership with Comme Des Garcons, one of the most influential and financially powerful houses in high fashion. The gap between the people who shop there and the people who work there is staggering. The workers named in this lawsuit were paid flat salaries and given titles, a form of compensation that looks stable on paper but strips workers of the legal protections that hourly wages carry.

This is the premium end of a pattern that stretches across the entire retail industry. The salary-plus-manager-title combination is a known and documented strategy for neutralizing overtime liability. When companies use it against workers in a market like New York City, where the cost of living is crushing, those stolen overtime hours translate directly into workers who cannot cover rent, cannot build savings, and cannot absorb emergencies. The FLSA’s overtime premium is worth 50 percent above the regular rate for every hour above 40. Across 13 workers, across employment spans stretching back to at least 2015, the cumulative amount of unpaid wages is an unknown figure that the litigation has not yet quantified, but the structural evidence in the complaint makes clear it was systematic and deliberate, not accidental.

The FLSA also provides for “an additional equal amount as liquidated damages” on top of unpaid overtime. That means each worker is potentially owed double the unpaid amount. The company knew this exposure existed when it classified these workers as exempt managers. It made a calculated bet that workers would not sue, or that if they did, the pleading standard would protect the company from ever having to answer for the scheme. The appeals court’s ruling strips that protection away.

Public Health: The Weight of Working Without End

The source document does not enumerate health outcomes in clinical terms, but the schedule it describes speaks clearly. Workers regularly left the building after 8 p.m. on closing shifts, then drafted and sent end-of-day reports and messaged clients, adding another five hours of work per week outside their posted schedule. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they handled merchandise shipments for three additional hours per week. On seasonal changeover weeks, they worked thirteen-hour days back to back.

Sustained work schedules in this range are directly associated with degraded sleep, elevated stress, increased risk of cardiovascular events, and diminished cognitive function. These are not abstractions. Retail work involves standing, client interaction, physical task management, and emotional labor. Workers performing these duties for 50-plus hours a week, without the compensatory wage that would allow them to reduce a second job or take genuine rest, carry a compounding physical cost. The company’s labor classification decision did not just take money from these workers. It took time. It took health. It took the margin of recovery that makes sustained work survivable.

The Cost of a Life: What DSMNY’s Bet Was Worth to Them

What Now: The Defendants, The Watchdogs, and Your Next Move

The Defendants Still Operating

• Comme Des Garcons, Ltd.: The parent company. Still operating Dover Street Market locations globally.
• Dover Street Market New York LLC: The direct employer named in the suit. Case remanded for further proceedings as of October 2023.
• Elaine Beuther: Named individually as a defendant in the original complaint.
• James Gilchrist: Named individually as a defendant in the original complaint.

Regulatory Watchdogs With Jurisdiction

• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WHD): Primary federal enforcer of the FLSA. Files complaints at dol.gov/agencies/whd.
• New York State Department of Labor: Enforces the New York Labor Law, which was also at issue in this case and still pending on remand.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): Relevant if workers face retaliation for organizing or speaking out about wage violations.
• New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection: Enforces city-level worker protections and accepts wage theft complaints.

What You Can Actually Do Right Now

If you work in retail with a title that includes the word “Manager” but your actual job is on the floor serving customers, you may be misclassified. Document your hours. Keep notes on your actual duties. Talk to coworkers about what they experience. Connect with the National Employment Law Project (nelp.org) or a local workers’ center for free guidance. The law is on your side. What these thirteen workers did, fighting back through the courts despite every attempt to shut them down, is mutual aid in legal form. Their win creates precedent that protects the next group of workers before they even know they need it. Organize. Document. Fight.