Opinion ID: 775086
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Relative Importance of Managerial Duties

Text: 39 The relative importance of the Baldwins' managerial duties compared to their nonexempt duties supports the exemption. The agreement and evidence from the record support the district court's conclusion that the Baldwins were in charge of making the relatively important day-to-day decisions of the facility and providing for the safety of those in the property. The Baldwins were on-call twenty-four hours a day to handle emergencies and to exercise their managerial discretion. In Kramer's general absence, someone had to manage the park. That task fell to the Baldwins and no one else. 40 The Baldwins argue that they spent the majority of their time performing the same tasks as the assistant managers, and that the real purpose of the assistant managers was to allow the managers to take some time off. That the assistant managers may have performed some managerial tasks does not render the tasks nonexempt. Murray v. Stuckey's Inc., 939 F.2d 614, 619 (8th Cir. 1991) (concluding that it was irrelevant to the primary duty inquiry whether other employees who reported to the manager were capable of performing part or even all of the manager's duties). Also, that the Baldwins performed some of the same tasks as their subordinates is not in and of itself evidence that the Baldwins do not qualify for the exemption. See Barner, 17 F.3d at 1260-61; Wainscoat, 471 F.2d at 1161. The Baldwins' principal value to Trailer Inns was directing the day-to-day operations of the park even though they performed a substantial amount of manual labor. See Dalheim v. KDFW-TV, 918 F.2d 1220, 1227 (5th Cir. 1990) (At least under the short tests, the employee's primary duty will usually be what she does that is of principal value to the employer, not the collateral tasks that she may also perform, even if they consume more than half her time.) (footnotes omitted). 41