Content Last Revised: 4/23/04 ---DISCLAIMER---

29CFR541.502 - Away from employer's place of business.

• Section Number: 541.502
• Section Name: Away from employer's place of business.

    An outside sales employee must be customarily and regularly engaged 
``away from the employer's place or places of business.'' The outside 
sales employee is an employee who makes sales at the customer's place 
of business or, if selling door-to-door, at the customer's home. 
Outside sales does not include sales made by mail, telephone or the 
Internet unless such contact is used merely as an adjunct to personal 
calls. Thus, any fixed site, whether home or office, used by a 
salesperson as a headquarters or for telephonic solicitation of sales 
is considered one of the employer's places of business, even though the 
employer is not in any formal sense the owner or tenant of the 
property. However, an outside sales employee does not lose the 
exemption by displaying samples in hotel sample rooms during trips from 
city to city; these sample rooms should not be considered as the 
employer's places of business. Similarly, an outside sales employee 
does not lose the exemption by displaying the employer's products at a 
trade show. If selling actually occurs, rather than just sales 
promotion, trade shows of short duration (i.e., one or two weeks) 
should not be considered as the employer's place of business.