Abby

There's been a bit of controversy over minimum wage lately.

Some say that raising the minimum wage would destroy small businesses. Others claim it isn't right that someone should work 40 hours a week and not earn enough to support a family.

Abby has been working for minimum wage or close to it for the last six years, and she can see both sides of the argument.

Abby graduated from West Islip High School in 2006. She moved to San Diego, California, the afternoon of her commencement ceremony. She lived in Pacific Beach with her sister and her sister's husband, and started working at a clothing store in neighborhood.

“I didn't have any plans for higher education when I got out there,” she says. “I just sort of kept doing things on a whim.”

Her whims eventually led her to school for massage therapy. She attended classes while still working, but her education hit a dead end when she struggled to find field experience.

Abby was making just enough at the clothing store to move out. She moved to another house in Pacific Beach that she shared with roommates, then went to live in a large, open floor studio apartment in downtown San Diego.

“I was really struggling with money,” Abby recollects. “I couldn't afford a car and I was still trying to pay off all those loans from school. I was just barely covering rent.”

She decided to move back in with her sister's family, who had relocated to a neighborhood on the outskirts of San Diego. For a time, her future seemed to be coming together. In 2009 Abby met her boyfriend, Adam. She took a job at Bed Bath & Beyond, which was close enough to the house that she could walk to work. But it was also at this time that she incurred serious debt, taking out a cash advance on a credit card to help pay rent.

“I can't believe I did that,” she says. “It's five years later and I'm still trying to pay that off.”

Unfortunately, in 2010, the landlord evicted the family in order to sell the house. Forced to move again, Abby could no longer work at Bed Bath & Beyond because she still had no car. She did odd jobs here and there for friends and family, but it was not enough.

Abby and Adam decided that perhaps they needed a change of scenery. They packed up and moved to Seattle in 2011. Abigail quickly found a job at a thrift store, and later with Forever 21. She finally had a plan for her education, and began to save up enough so that she could go back to college to become a physical therapy assistant.

But Seattle proved to be even more expensive than San Diego had been. Abby and Adam both worked full time, but with their expenses all income seemed to be out the door again before it ever touched their hands.

However, Abby was proud of one thing.

“I got my per-requisites done!” she says, happily. “It seemed a lot of money for a community college, but I got something done while I was up there!”

After more than a year of barely making ends meet,. Abby and Adam decided to move back to San Diego. Abby was able to transfer and keep her job with Forever 21, although now she works part time instead of full time. She is currently searching for another job and looking forward to starting school again in the wintertime.

“My life is like a constant struggle of little minimum wage jobs,” she comments. “I owe Adam so much, he takes such good care of me.”

Despite all of her experiences, Abby is still on the fence about any kind of drastic minimum wage increase.

“I know it would hurt a lot of small businesses, and I try to support local,” she says. “But at the same time, I know that lots of corporations could pay their employees so much more than they do. It's a tough call.”