Opinion ID: 799454
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The FLSA and Accompanying Department of Labor Regulations

Text: Under the FLSA, employees are entitled to overtime pay (i.e., one and one-half times the regular rate) for any hours worked in excess of forty hours per week, unless they come within one of the various exemptions set forth in the Act. 29 U.S.C. §§ 207, 213. Under the statute's express delegation of rule-making authority, the Secretary has issued, after notice-and-comment procedures, detailed regulations that define each of the exemptions in § 213(a)(1). See 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1) (providing authority); Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales and Computer Employees, 69 Fed.Reg. 22,122, 22,124 (Apr. 23, 2004) (acknowledging that the regulations were issued pursuant to statutory authority); see also Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke, 551 U.S. 158, 165-68, 127 S.Ct. 2339, 168 L.Ed.2d 54 (2007) (explaining the statutory and regulatory scheme); Haywood v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 121 F.3d 1066, 1069 (7th Cir.1997) (discussing the regulations as having the force and effect of law (quotation marks omitted)). Among those exemptions is one that exempts from the overtime requirement of § 207 any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity. 29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1). With regard to the administrative exemption, the Secretary has promulgated the following regulations: (a) The term employee employed in a bona fide administrative capacity in section 13(a)(1) of the Act shall mean any employee: (1) Compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate of not less than $455 per week (or $380 per week, if employed in American Samoa by employers other than the Federal Government), exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities; (2) Whose primary duty is the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers; and (3) Whose primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. 29 C.F.R. § 541.200(a). In applying this regulation, [20] our evaluation of the present FLSA claim, as in all such claims, requires a thorough, fact-intensive analysis of the employee's employment duties and responsibilities. See Roe-Midgett v. CC Servs., Inc., 512 F.3d 865, 870 (7th Cir.2008). With respect to the first prong, the parties agree, and the records are clear, that the sales representatives were compensated on a salary basis that qualifies them for the administrative employee exemption. Accordingly, the two duties requirements set forth in the second and third prong of the regulation are the focus of this appeal. We now turn to an analysis of each.
The second prong of the test for the applicability of the administrative exemption requires that the qualifying employee's primary duty [must be] the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers. 29 C.F.R. § 541.200(a)(2). The regulations provide further guidance with respect to this point: (a) To qualify for the administrative exemption, an employee's primary duty must be the performance of work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers. The phrase directly related to the management or general business operations refers to the type of work performed by the employee. To meet this requirement, an employee must perform work directly related to assisting with the running or servicing of the business, as distinguished, for example, from working on a manufacturing production line or selling a product in a retail or service establishment. (b) Work directly related to management or general business operations includes, but is not limited to, work in functional areas such as tax; finance; accounting; budgeting; auditing; insurance; quality control; purchasing; procurement; advertising; marketing; research; safety and health; personnel management; human resources; employee benefits; labor relations; public relations, government relations; computer network, internet and database administration; legal and regulatory compliance; and similar activities. Some of these activities may be performed by employees who also would qualify for another exemption. (c) An employee may qualify for the administrative exemption if the employee's primary duty is the performance of work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer's customers. Thus, for example, employees acting as advisers or consultants to their employer's clients or customers (as tax experts or financial consultants, for example) may be exempt. Id. § 541.201 (emphasis added). The plaintiffs submit that, as sales representatives, their day-to-day responsibilities do not include work that would constitute running or servicing ... the business within the meaning of 29 C.F.R. § 541.201(a). [21] In their view, the work that they perform for Lilly and Abbott, promotional and sales-like work focused on a limited, select group of physicians, does not qualify for the administrative exemption. The plaintiffs elaborate on this argument by contending that the exemption was designed for higher level employees whose work is targeted at sales, promotional and marketing policies of the company overall. Schaefer-LaRose Br. 47; accord Abbott Appellees'/Cross-Appellants' Br. 72. Finally, the plaintiffs argue that cases that have applied the exemption in other courts have involved employees who possessed greater authority with respect to strategic design, proposal writing, supervision or similar significant responsibilities. We cannot accept the plaintiffs' view. We begin with the language of the regulations. Specifically, the regulations distinguish between the type of work that involves the running or servicing of the business, and work such as laboring on a manufacturing production line or selling a product in a retail or service establishment. 29 C.F.R. § 541.201(a). That is, when an employee is engaged in the core function of a business, his or her task is not properly categorized as administrative. See Haywood, 121 F.3d at 1072 (quoting Martin v. Cooper Electric Supply Co., 940 F.2d 896, 904-05 (3d Cir.1991), for the proposition that `[s]ervicing' a business within the meaning of [the former regulation] denotes employment activity ancillary to an employer's principal production activity). As the district court in Schaefer-LaRose noted, the core function of the drug makers here is the development and production of pharmaceutical products. The plaintiffs' work supports that function, but is distinct from it. [22] Furthermore, in the preamble to the current regulations, the Department of Labor reaffirms the view it has held for more than sixty years that the administrative operations of the business include the work of employees servicing the business, such as, for example, advising the management, planning, negotiating, representing the company, purchasing, promoting sales, and business research and control. 69 Fed.Reg. at 22,138 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. (noting that exempt administrative work includes not only those who participate in the formulation of management policies or in the operation of the business as a whole, but it also includes a wide variety of persons who either carry out major assignments in conducting the operations of the business, or whose work affects business operations to a substantial degree, even though their assignments are tasks related to the operation of a particular segment of the business (internal quotation marks omitted)). The current regulations themselves provide an illustrative list of functional areas or departments from which employees frequently qualify for the administrative exemption; that list includes such areas as advertising, marketing and public relations. 29 C.F.R. § 541.201(b). Although none is a perfect description of the work of the representatives here, they are sufficiently similar to suggest that the representatives' work is directly related to the general business operations of the pharmaceutical companies. [23] The representatives here are the principal ongoing representatives of the company to the professional community that is in a unique position to make, or deny, a viable market for the company's product. They do not make individual sales of medications, but ensure, on a continuing basis, that the medical community is fully aware of the potential of the company's pharmaceutical products and that the same community is confident that the company's products will be effective tools in the practical setting of a medical practice. Moreover, the representatives are one of the principal, and perhaps the main, conduit by which physicians provide meaningful feedback to the company on the actual effectiveness, and limitations, of the product. Our cases further support this result. In Haywood v. North American Van Lines, Inc., 121 F.3d 1066 (7th Cir.1997), we considered the claim for overtime by a customer service representative for a moving company. The plaintiff was responsible for settling customer complaints to ensure quality service and to prevent the customer's dissatisfaction with some aspect of his move from escalating into litigation. Id. at 1068. In this role, she served as the face of the company to claimants and, sometimes, their attorneys. In concluding that she satisfied the directly related prong of the administrative exemption, we noted that her tasks, including serving as the sole contact with customers and represent[ing] the[] employer, were among the types of classic administrative functions contemplated by the regulation. Id. at 1072. We similarly concluded that her work was clearly of substantial importance to the business, in part because her role was to protect the customer base by keeping customers happy and to minimize possible litigation exposure that could result from dissatisfied customers. Id. Similarly, in Roe-Midgett v. CC Services, Inc., 512 F.3d 865 (7th Cir.2008), we held that work performed by automobile damage appraisers satisfied the directly related prong, even when their duties did not include making pivotal determinations of coverage or liability. In Roe-Midgett, the employer provided, under contract, claims processing services for liability insurers. The employees in question spent most of their time investigating automobile accidents in the field, interviewing witnesses, physically inspecting damage and estimating repair costs using appropriate software. If the appropriate authorities within the company determined that liability had been established and coverage approved, the employees were empowered to settle lower-end claims consistent with their estimates. In reaching our conclusion that they were part of the employer's general business operations, we noted that the plaintiff damage appraisers operated with minimal oversight in settling more than half of all claims that the employer processed. We found significant that the appraisers were the `face' of the employer to third parties, specifically, insurance claimants and mechanics; furthermore, their front line[] tasks were more properly characterized as administrative as opposed to that of a postindustrial equivalent of production workers. Id. at 871-72. We also find support in a decision from our colleagues in the First Circuit, Reich v. John Alden Life Insurance Co., 126 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.1997). In John Alden, the First Circuit evaluated a claim by marketing representatives who claimed that John Alden had misclassified them as exempt and denied them overtime in violation of the FLSA. The marketing representatives did not sell insurance products to end-consumers; instead, they managed relationships with a list of independent field agents who worked directly with customers seeking insurance. The field agents, who were not employed by John Alden, would rely on the information provided by the marketing representatives in preparing insurance proposals and in recommending insurance products to consumers. Those field agents typically recommended a range of products, including both those offered by John Alden and by its competitors. Each representative maintained his own deck of agents, usually 500-600, and was responsible for continually cull[ing] [his] deck[] to maintain an active agent base. Id. at 3-4 (quotation marks omitted). The marketing representatives did not sell insurance products to the agents or to the customers; instead, they encouraged the use of John Alden's products by rigorously maintaining contact with a critical middleman in the chain to the customer. The First Circuit, drawing on the Third Circuit's decision in Martin v. Cooper Electric Supply Co., 940 F.2d 896 (3d Cir.1991), held that the marketing representatives were performing administrative work. Specifically, the court concluded that they were engaged in `activit[ies] ancillary to' the employer's principal function. John Alden, 126 F.3d at 10 (emphasis in original); see also id. (agreeing with the district court's conclusion that the day-to-day activities of marketing representatives are more in the nature of `representing the company' and `promoting sales' of John Alden products, two examples of exempt administrative work provided by the regulations then in effect). The court also acknowledged that the representatives played no meaningful role in negotiation. Although they recommended appropriate combination[s] of John Alden products, they did not price them or approve ultimate applications for coverage. Id. at 4. The parallels between the present case and Haywood, Roe-Midgett and John Alden convince us that the work done by the pharmaceutical sales representatives properly is characterized as administrative. The representatives before us are the public face of their employer to the most important decision-maker regarding use of their companies' products, the prescribing physicians. The representatives neither produce the employers' products nor generate specific sales, but service the production and sales aspects of the business by communicating the employers' message to physicians. The goal of their work is to increase market share indirectly or, stated differently, to promote sales. To the maximum extent possible, their work is based on maintaining continuous and regular contact with the physicians to whom they are assigned, anticipating their objections and concerns and addressing them on behalf of their employers. We therefore conclude that the sales representatives' primary duty is the performance of work directly related to the general business operations of the employers, which satisfies the second prong of the administrative exemption.
The third prong of the administrative exemption requires that the employee's primary duty include[] the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. 29 C.F.R. § 541.200(a)(3). Again, the regulations provide substantial further detail: (a) To qualify for the administrative exemption, an employee's primary duty must include the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. In general, the exercise of discretion and independent judgment involves the comparison and the evaluation of possible courses of conduct, and acting or making a decision after the various possibilities have been considered. The term matters of significance refers to the level of importance or consequence of the work performed. (b) The phrase discretion and independent judgment must be applied in the light of all the facts involved in the particular employment situation in which the question arises. Factors to consider when determining whether an employee exercises discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance include, but are not limited to: whether the employee has authority to formulate, affect, interpret, or implement management policies or operating practices; whether the employee carries out major assignments in conducting the operations of the business; whether the employee performs work that affects business operations to a substantial degree, even if the employee's assignments are related to operation of a particular segment of the business; whether the employee has authority to commit the employer in matters that have significant financial impact; whether the employee has authority to waive or deviate from established policies and procedures without prior approval; whether the employee has authority to negotiate and bind the company on significant matters; whether the employee provides consultation or expert advice to management; whether the employee is involved in planning long- or short-term business objectives; whether the employee investigates and resolves matters of significance on behalf of management; and whether the employee represents the company in handling complaints, arbitrating disputes or resolving grievances. (c) The exercise of discretion and independent judgment implies that the employee has authority to make an independent choice, free from immediate direction or supervision. However, employees can exercise discretion and independent judgment even if their decisions or recommendations are reviewed at a higher level. Thus, the term discretion and independent judgment does not require that the decisions made by an employee have a finality that goes with unlimited authority and a complete absence of review. The decisions made as a result of the exercise of discretion and independent judgment may consist of recommendations for action rather than the actual taking of action. The fact that an employee's decision may be subject to review and that upon occasion the decisions are revised or reversed after review does not mean that the employee is not exercising discretion and independent judgment. For example, the policies formulated by the credit manager of a large corporation may be subject to review by higher company officials who may approve or disapprove these policies. The management consultant who has made a study of the operations of a business and who has drawn a proposed change in organization may have the plan reviewed or revised by superiors before it is submitted to the client. (d) An employer's volume of business may make it necessary to employ a number of employees to perform the same or similar work. The fact that many employees perform identical work or work of the same relative importance does not mean that the work of each such employee does not involve the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. (e) The exercise of discretion and independent judgment must be more than the use of skill in applying well-established techniques, procedures or specific standards described in manuals or other sources. The exercise of discretion and independent judgment also does not include clerical or secretarial work, recording or tabulating data, or performing other mechanical, repetitive, recurrent or routine work. An employee who simply tabulates data is not exempt, even if labeled as a statistician. (f) An employee does not exercise discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance merely because the employer will experience financial losses if the employee fails to perform the job properly. For example, a messenger who is entrusted with carrying large sums of money does not exercise discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance even though serious consequences may flow from the employee's neglect. Similarly, an employee who operates very expensive equipment does not exercise discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance merely because improper performance of the employee's duties may cause serious financial loss to the employer. Id. § 541.202 (internal citation omitted). The plaintiffs contend that their work fails to meet the standard set forth in the regulation. The Department of Labor supports the position of the plaintiffs, relying principally on its own prior opinion letters in other contexts, as well as the Second Circuit's decision in Novartis, 611 F.3d 141. By contrast, the pharmaceutical companies assert that the representatives had a host of core duties committed to their discretion, including determining how best to gain access to particular physicians and managing their limited discretionary budgets. Their primary argument, however, focuses on the discretion that an individual representative must employ in the course of an individual sales call with a physician to communicate effectively his employer's core message to the specific audience and to address a physician's particular concerns. The application of the discretion and independent judgment prong in the pharmaceutical sales context is a question of first impression in this circuit. Several of our sister circuits have considered similar cases, however, and, we begin our consideration of this facet of the case by examining their holdings. We focus on two decisions that place the issue before us in stark relief. The first is the case upon which the plaintiffs, supported by the Secretary, rest a substantial part of their argument, the Second Circuit's decision in Novartis, 611 F.3d 141. The employer in Novartis raised almost identical arguments concerning the discretion exercised by its representatives to those that Abbott and Lilly raise here. The Second Circuit rejected those arguments, largely by [c]omparing the record as to the Reps' primary duties against the illustrative factors set out in § 541.202(b). 611 F.3d at 156. The court concluded that the record before it showed no genuine issue of fact on some specific factors in the regulation, including the authority to commit the employer on matters having significant financial impact or to formulate management policies or practices. The court further concluded that other activities evinced not discretion but simply the application of skill. Not only is the application of skill to established practices insufficient to demonstrate discretion, see 29 C.F.R. § 541.202(e), the Second Circuit determined that the skills are exercised within severe limits imposed by the employer. Novartis, 611 F.3d at 157. Finally, the court concluded that those matters truly within the discretion of the representatives, such as setting daily schedules, allocating budgets for promotional events and allocating samples, were too insignificant to warrant application of the exemption. By contrast, in Smith v. Johnson & Johnson, 593 F.3d 280 (3d Cir.2010), the Third Circuit reached an opposite result. The court took note of the plaintiff's own characterization of her independence in performing her job responsibilities. Specifically, the Smith plaintiff stated that she was allowed to run the territory the way [she] wanted to, id. at 283 (quotation marks omitted), which the court characterized as an admission that she was the manager of her own business, id. at 285. Notably, however, although the Third Circuit carefully limited its holding to the specific facts developed in discovery in the case before it, id. at 283 n. 1, the job responsibilities to which the plaintiff referred closely mirrored those described for the Novartis representatives. As the Third Circuit described those duties: In essence, Smith's position required her to travel to various doctors' offices and hospitals where she extolled the benefit of J & J's pharmaceutical drug Concerta to the prescribing doctors. J & J hoped that the doctors, having learned about the benefits of Concerta, would choose to prescribe this drug for their patients. Smith, however, did not sell Concerta (a controlled substance) directly to the doctors, as such sales are prohibited by law. J & J gave Smith a list of target doctors that it created and told her to complete an average of ten visits per day, visiting every doctor on her target list at least once each quarter. To schedule visits with reluctant doctors, Smith had to be inventive and cultivate relationships with the doctor's staff, an endeavor in which she found that coffee and donuts were useful tools. J & J left the itinerary and order of Smith's visits to the target doctors to her discretion. The J & J target list identified high-priority doctors that issued a large number of prescriptions for Concerta or a competing product, and Smith could choose to visit high-priority doctors more than once each quarter. J & J gave her a budget for these visits and she could use the money in the budget to take the doctors to lunch or to sponsor seminars. At the meetings, Smith worked off of a prepared message that J & J provided her, although she had some discretion when deciding how to approach the conversation. J & J gave her pre-approved visual aids and did not permit her to use other aids. J & J trained its representatives to gauge a doctor's interest and knowledge about the product, eventually building to a commitment to prescribe the drug. In Smith's deposition she made it clear that she appreciated the freedom and responsibility that her position provided. Though a supervisor accompanied Smith during the doctor visits on a few days each quarter, by her own calculation Smith was unsupervised 95% of the time. As Smith explained during her deposition, [i]t was really up to me to run the territory the way I wanted to. And it was not a micromanaged type of job. I had pretty much the ability to work it the way I wanted to work it. According to Smith's job description, she was required to plan and prioritize her responsibilities in a manner that maximized business results. J & J witnesses testified (and J & J documents confirmed) that Smith was the expert on her own territory and was supposed to develop a strategic plan to achieve higher sales. Before her visits, Smith completed pre-visit reports to help her select the correct strategy for that day's visits. At the end of her day, Smith completed post-visit reports summarizing the events of the visits. Smith would refer back to this information before her next visit to the same doctors. After adding up the time she spent writing pre-visit reports, driving, conducting the visits, writing post-visit reports, and completing other tasks, Smith worked more than eight hours per day. Smith earned a base salary of $66,000 but was not paid overtime, though J & J, at its discretion, could award her a bonus. J & J considered the number of Concerta prescriptions issued in Smith's territory in determining her bonus. The collection of this data and its direct relationship to Smith's efforts was, however, subject to error as purchasers might fill their prescriptions in another territory or with a pharmacy that would not release the pertinent information to J & J. 593 F.3d at 282-83 (alteration in original) (citation omitted). Emphasizing the Third Circuit's consideration of the plaintiff's deposition testimony, the plaintiffs here, supported by the Secretary, contend that the decisions of the Second and Third Circuits are not in conflict. Such a view simply distracts from the very real disagreement between those circuits. It is true that the Smith case included damaging deposition admissions by the plaintiff: She characterized her job as the manager of her own business. Nevertheless, the court's ultimate analytical focus was, quite properly, on the nature of her day-to-day duties, duties strikingly similar to those of the plaintiffs in Novartis and to the plaintiffs in the cases now before us. It is those day-to-day duties on which a proper analysis under the FLSA rests, not merely the parties' characterizations of those duties as involving discretion or not. See Roe-Midgett, 512 F.3d at 870. Our examination of the records in these cases convinces us that the representatives were required to exercise a significant measure of discretion and independent judgment, despite the constraints placed on them, and indeed on all representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, by the regulatory environment in which they must live. See Kennedy v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 410 F.3d 365, 374-75 (7th Cir.2005) (noting that the presence of strict regulatory limits channeling employee discretion did not prevent exercise of independent judgment). Indeed, despite these constraints, it is in the core function of the representatives' duties, the physician office visits, that we see the most important exercise of discretion and professional judgment on their part. Although the regulatory constraints of the industry dictate that the representatives must deliver the pharmaceutical companies' messages with precision, the representatives nevertheless are sent into physicians' offices with minimal supervision to engage in conversation with the prescribing physicians who, as a practical matter, are in the most direct position to determine whether their companies' products have a viable market. In speaking to individual physicians, the representatives must tailor their messages to respond to the circumstances, whether those be the time or attention constraints from the physician or the concerns and objections that are voiced during a particular or previous visit. See supra note 9 (quoting the representatives' own descriptions of their physician interactions). Indeed, although the companies gave the representatives precise wording and materials, they certainly did not treat the representatives as simple mouthpieces, reciting scripts. The records show that, although most representatives had no medical background, the companies trained them extensively in disease processes, their own assigned products and products manufactured by competitors; indeed, they were tested in their substantive knowledge. The level of attention given to substantive education demonstrates that the company viewed these individuals as employees needing a solid understanding of the message that they were delivering if they were to fulfill their roles as the company's representative to the community of practicing physicians. A significant amount of discretion is no doubt required to determine when the physician's inquiry is sufficiently nuanced to require a response from a more knowledgeable individual than the representative himself. The representative who is unable to tailor the conversation to the time and circumstances, or to engage the physician in an intelligent conversation, is understandably not an effective representative to the professional community whose estimation of the company is key to its success. Beyond these physician interactions, which we consider to be the critical function of the job and the place in which discretion is most evident, the representatives' other duties related to the actual call on the physician also manifest a substantial measure of judgment. Although representatives are given specific call plans identifying the physicians to be visited and the degree of frequency or priority category for each physician, several representatives testified that they apply a measure of strategic analysis to their work, choosing to see physicians not on their call plans or non-physicians who may influence prescribing patterns. See supra note 14 (describing discretion applied to call plans). They work collaboratively with one another, proposing comprehensive visit plans for the territories and checking in regularly by phone to keep each other abreast of developments in particular visits with physicians. Representatives also spend the vast majority of their time entirely unsupervised. Although they keep extensive records, through which management can and does monitor their progress, neither the fact that management reviews their work nor that they are required to keep such records detracts from the discretion they exercise in the core of their workday. See 29 C.F.R. § 541.202(c) (regarding review by supervisors); Piscione v. Ernst & Young, L.L.P., 171 F.3d 527, 538 (7th Cir. 1999) (Just because an employee may spend a significant portion of his time engaged in ministerial or routine tasks does not necessarily prevent the application of the administrative exemption.). As the Second Circuit noted in Novartis, there are a number of tasks listed in the regulations as [f]actors to consider in determining whether an employee exercises discretion that are clearly not present in this case. See 29 C.F.R. § 541.202(b). We previously have acknowledged, however, that the nature of a large, modern business does not permit any one employee to exercise all of the functions listed in these general regulations. See Verkuilen v. MediaBank, LLC, 646 F.3d 979, 982-83 (7th Cir.2011) (It is true that the regulation, only a few provisions of which we have quoted (it goes on and on), lists a number of `administrative' functions that the plaintiff did not perform, such as negotiating contracts with MediaBank's customers. But below the highest executive level a modern business is a congeries of specialists. (emphasis in original)). The ultimate question is not whether the plaintiff did all, or any, of the specific tasks listed in § 541.202(b); the list identifies itself as exemplary and non-exhaustive. Indeed, in the preamble to the current regulations, after setting forth the factors now listed in § 541.202(b), the Secretary continues: Other factors which federal courts have found relevant in assessing whether an employee exercises discretion and independent judgment include the employee's freedom from direct supervision, personnel responsibilities, troubleshooting or problem-solving activities on behalf of management, use of personalized communication techniques, authority to handle atypical or unusual situations, authority to set budgets, responsibility for assessing customer needs, primary contact to public or customers on behalf of the employer, the duty to anticipate competitive products or services and distinguish them from competitor's products or services, advertising or promotion work, and coordination of departments, requirements, or other activities for or on behalf of employer or employer's clients or customers. 69 Fed.Reg. at 22,144 (emphasis added). Although certain of these specific factors clearly apply to the present case, the most important point is that this passage makes clear that the determination of discretion is a circumstance-specific one that will look different from industry to industry and position to position. This list of factors is not a checklist; it is a guide. The particular discretion exercised by the representatives before us is within the range of cases in which the exemption has been applied. See, e.g., Verkuilen, 646 F.3d at 982 (holding that an account manager at a software company who [i]dentif[ied] customers' needs, translat[ed] them into specifications to be implemented by the developers, [and] assist[ed] the customers in implementing the solutions qualified for the administrative exemption); Piscione, 171 F.3d at 535-36 (concluding that a human resources consultant exercised discretion in his duties by, among other things, improv[ing] client services and being responsible for several clients); John Alden, 126 F.3d at 13 (finding sufficient discretion where the marketing representatives rely on their own knowledge of an agent's business to help tailor proposals for the agent's end-customers and are able to anticipate the competing products that the agent's customers might be considering, and distinguish John Alden's offerings from those of competitors). Finally, the plaintiffs and the Secretary briefly contend that the work of the representatives principally involves the application of skill, rather than judgment. Although they are correct that the regulations draw this distinction and caution that skill is insufficient to warrant the exemption, skill and judgment are not mutually exclusive. The records clearly demonstrate that the representatives receive extensive skills training, particularly on sales techniques. They most certainly employ this skill, and, indeed, many others in the course of their daily duties. Nevertheless, applying these skills entails a great deal of judgment. The job requires far more than applying well-established techniques, procedures or specific standards described in manuals. 29 C.F.R. § 541.202(e). It does not involve simple clerical or secretarial work, recording or tabulating data, or performing other mechanical, repetitive, recurrent or routine work. Id.