Ever since opening the doors to their Dairy Queen franchise on New Years Eve 2017, siblings Patty DeMint and Michelle Robey — known affectionately as the “DQ Sisters” in their Medford, New York, community — earned a reputation for serving up second chances alongside their sundaes and sprinkles.
“We really pride ourselves on being kind of a second-chance employer,” Robey told Moneywise.
“We’ve hired people who’ve had addiction. We’ve hired people who have been in jail and are trying to get back. We believe in that.”
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The sisters also became known for going above and beyond for their employees — anything from offering money in times of need to delivering Christmas presents to their workers’ kids. DeMint, who manages the restaurant, noted that she “always wanted to give back and just lift people up,” and that once people “came into our DQ family, they were family.”
In 2019, however, the ice cream hub hit a rocky road when a former employee filed a lawsuit against the sisters for violating a vague, Depression-era New York state law. It hit the sisters especially hard because they say they’d taken the unnamed former employee into their own homes while she dealt with personal issues, issues which eventually led to her dismissal.
The sisters say that, even in letting her go, they brought her to breakfast and offered their continued support. It’s part of the reason DeMint said the situation with the lawsuit felt so "devastating.”
Suddenly, the sisters were facing a $6 million legal challenge that threatened to bankrupt them and shutter their shop.
Suing the DQ Sisters over biweekly pay
Robey said that “when we got the lawsuit, the first listing on it was an overtime claim” followed by other “labor related claims.” So the sisters fought it for a year, adamant that they’d paid the former employee every dollar she was owed. She said that “it wasn’t until it became a class action suit that we realized that it was never about overtime.”
The focus, instead, turned to New York State’s Frequency of Pay law. It requires “manual workers,” defined as “individuals who spend more than 25% of working time engaged in physical labor,” which “has been interpreted broadly to include countless physical tasks performed by employees,” receive their pay on a weekly basis. (1)
It’s a law that the sisters said they’d never heard of, which is why they paid their employees biweekly — a process they claim was never flagged by anyone, including by their payroll company or during an audit conducted by the state’s Department of Labor.
Ultimately, the lawsuit became part of a trend of suits against New York businesses, according to CBS News (2), filed by law firms that solicited, including through ads on social media, claimants who were paid biweekly.
Labor lawyer Howard Wexler told the news outlet that the lawsuits “took what was a law that required you to pay your employees weekly into more of a ‘gotcha’ based on technical violation.”
The sisters wanted to fight it, but said their lawyer advised them that “the way the law is written right now, you’re going to lose.” So they settled out of court for $450,000. Yet, after lawyers took their share, CBS reported, former employees collected only about $200 each.
After the lawsuit, the DQ Sisters stepped up to help protect other small business owners from dealing with a similar nightmare by successfully working with state lawmakers to change the law. As of May, businesses who pay workers biweekly would only be on the hook for interest owed on the ‘late’ wages — a far cry from the sisters’ half a million payout. They’re also looking into recouping some of their losses through their own legal action.
The sisters themselves, however, still have to pay their settlement. They say it’s meant liquidating retirement accounts, borrowing money from friends and family and even asking their mother to collateralize her house. But they still owe $150,000, on top of their own legal fees.
Which is why it meant so much that one of their own employees set up a GoFundMe for them, noting they did so because the DQ Sisters became “surrogate mothers when life gets tough” for their workers. (3) As of this writing, they’ve raised more than $55,000 — much of which is paid in amounts of $5, $10 or $20, with DeMint saying that means a lot of it has come from customers and employees.
“For them to give that to me, to my sister, it’s overwhelming,” she said, holding back tears.
“Because I was very jaded … So it brought me back to where I needed to be, grounded in my efforts to pay it forward.”
Read more: Want an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan ‘works every single time’ to kill debt, get rich in America — and that ‘anyone’ can do it
How employers and workers can protect themselves
Employers should make themselves aware of the various federal, state and local payroll laws to avoid what ADP describes as “penalties that could negatively affect their bottom line or even put them out of business” (4).
The payroll and HR firm notes that common employer payroll mistakes often revolve around the misclassification of employees and contractors as well as errors involving workers’ compensation and failing to comply with the Equal Pay Act. (5) Using tools like payroll software and compliance checklists can, they add, “help avoid tax trouble and maintain positive workforce morale.”
Employees, meanwhile, can look to The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which is meant to ensure fair pay, overtime compensation and proper employment conditions for workers in the United States. Still, despite the FLSA, Working America — an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations — warns that “If your paycheck doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t” (6). And that’s not hyperbole.
A 2024 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that government antiwage theft efforts recovered more than $1.5 billion dollars in stolen wages for American workers in only a two-year period, between 2021 and 2023 (7). “Wage theft,” they say, “is pervasive across all industries and income levels in the country.”
That’s why Working America recommends keeping a close eye on your pay stub and immediately reporting any discrepancies to your employer to ensure it’s corrected in a timely manner.
They also suggest keeping your own records of all the hours you put in on the job — and even, if you’re comfortable doing so, asking your boss to regularly sign it, thus verifying it — and consulting with fellow employees, human resources and even legal representation if you experience consistent shortages in your wages.
As for Robey and DeMint, they suggest finding a mentor in a larger organization whose brain you can pick for help and guidance, as well as preparing yourself for the myriad expenses that you didn’t expect but may have to cover.
Still, despite everything they went through, and the financial struggles that remain, the DQ Sisters remain grounded and grateful.
“I really thought it was going to destroy us,” DeMint said of the lawsuit, before noting how much of a lift the flood of love and support has given them.
“We might have lost a lot of money, but … we’re just going to keep doing what we do. So it’s been beautiful.”
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Article sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
New York State Department of Labor (1); CBS News (2); GoFundMe (3); ADP (4); U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (5); Working America (6); Economic Policy Institute (7)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.