Addison earned a fixed hourly rate working as a sales clerk. if she works on a holiday, she earns a different hourly rate than she earns on a regular day. in one week, she earns $188.50 by working 5 hours on a holiday and 16 hours during regular days. a different week, she earns $254.00 by working 8 hours on a holiday and 20 hours during regular days. how much more is addison’s holiday hourly rate than her regular hourly rate?

Idk if you can tell what i did, but basically step one is use the two sets of information to write two different equations. step two: isolate one of the variables in one of the equations (your choice, doesnt matter which). i used ‘y’ in the second equation, found it equal to 31.75-2.5x, and substituted that value for y in the first equation. at that point i have an equation with only one variable (x) and i can solve for it. last, i use the value of x to solve for y by substituting it for x in the second original equation.

so... holiday hourly wage = $10.5
normal = $8.5

it sounds a little complicated but it makes sense to me which means its pretty simple

It is the top one. the answer is -7. that is smallest