SOLUTION: Acme Hardware pays its salespersons $1000.00 per month plus a graduated commission of 2% on the first $40,000 of sales and 3% on sales above $40,000. Amy sold $42,000 of merchandis

Question 446316: Acme Hardware pays its salespersons $1000.00 per month plus a graduated commission of 2% on the first $40,000 of sales and 3% on sales above $40,000. Amy sold $42,000 of merchandise. What is Amy's total pay for the month?
Found 3 solutions by rfer, josmiceli, bucky:
Answer by rfer(16322)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
x=1000+40000*0.02+2000*0.03
x=1000+800+60
x=$1860.00
Answer by josmiceli(19441)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Her total pay was

Her total pay was $1,860 /month
Answer by bucky(2189)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
Well, we know one part of her salary for sure. Amy gets $1000 for the month even if she sells nothing. (I would presume that if she sold nothing for a while, Amy would be forced to look for another job by her unhappy employer.)
However, Amy can increase her income by earning a percent of her sales. For every sale up to the amount of $40,000 Amy will be awarded a commission of 2% of the amount of her sales. Amy sold more than $40,000 so she collects 2% of $40,000 or 0.02*40,000 and that amount is $800.
So now we know that Amy made at least $1000 + $800 = $1800 that month.
But Amy did better than that. After she reached $40,000 in sales, she went on to sell $2,000 more than that. For this next $2,000 Amy collected a commission of 3%. In other words, Amy made:
0.03*2000 = $60
So adding this to the $1800 that we already know about, we find that Amy collected $1860 for the month.
Hope this helps you to understand the problem and gives you some insight into how you can talk your way through a problem rather than immediately trying to write some sort of an equation and then solving it.

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