I have been Salaried Exempt forever. I had to spend two days of my vacation in Hawaii in the hotel on the phone with some moron who reformatted the computer we used for time accounting. Like someone said, Salaried Exempt are subject to work 365/24 with no expectation of paid overtime. Or common courtesy for that matter. My employer was very close to ordering me to leave Hawaii, come back and fix the computer. (Which has working just fine until moron reformatted it for no reason). I have worked 36 hour shifts because the job required it. Now I generally got pretty good year end bonus payments, but this was not a legal requirement. I remember one year I did not get a raise because I was on HR's coal-list for something THEY did, but next year my VP got me a bonus larger then my annual salary. HR threw a fit but they were on my VP's coal list by this time and he not only did not care about their opinion, he wanted the message received. And HR was instructing me to break the law. My refusal got me in deep doo-doo with them but put them on Corporate Counsel's coal-list.