Legal Question in Employment Law in California

You are thinking about "reporting time pay." The reason for the confusion is that there is no exact time. The rule is that if an employee is required to report to work but is not put to work for his or her full "regular scheduled" work time, the employer must pay at least half the regular time, but not less than two nor more than four hours. So for a brand new employee it would be 2 hours. Once you have a regular or average normal shift, you must be paid for half that shift every time you show up, even if you don't work half that shift. There is, therefore, no real requirement for how long a shift must be. Since they have to pay you for at least two hours every time you report, however, that is the de facto minimum shift unless and until you establish a longer regular scheduled shift. Overtime is much more complicated, and depends on your industry and occupation. For most jobs, however, over 8 hours in a day, or 40 hours in a week, or six days in a week, you must be paid 1.5 your regular wage for the excess time. Your mandatory 1/2 hour meal break is not counted in the 8. Your mandatory rest breaks are. Also, the employer sets when a week begins and ends. So if your employer sets midnight Sunday as the end of one week and beginning of the next, the employer could work you six hours a day Tuesday through Sunday of one week, and then Monday through Saturday of the next week, and pay no overtime because you only worked six days each week, six hours a day, and 36 hours in each week. Then there is double overtime. If you work more than 12 hours in a day, or 60 hours in a week, you get double your regular rate for the excess hours. But, if you are already on 1.5 time for some other reason you can hit double time early. For example if you worked that six hours Monday through Saturday, and then you work Sunday too, you would hit double time after four hours, because you would be on seven days and over 40 hours. If you had worked six days at five a day, you wouldn't hit double until 8 hours on the seventh day. Confused enough? Well take consolation in the fact that at least you aren't the one legally responsible for calculating a payroll and making sure it's right.

I think your question was whether the company could schedule you for only a small number of hours, like one or two per day and not every day. Restaurant servers frequently face than issue. Then, for any day you are scheduled, you are entitled to get a minimum two hours of pay at at least minimum wage, so they could schedule you for only that amount. They are not 'required' to schedule you at all, thus leaving you hanging without actual work or income, while technically still on the payroll. You then could quit if unwilling to tolerate that.