by Kari Byron
Smile. I can’t stand it either when a random man on the street tells me to smile. But on a job interview or negotiation, smiling is a power play. I smile through pain, through anxiety, through depression. It’s a way to trick your brain into thinking you’re okay and in control. Smiling is the least you can do for the greatest impact.
It never hurts to ask. When you are being offered a job, ALWAYS let them make the first offer, and then don’t accept it. Ask for an additional 10 to 30 percent right off the bat. They might turn you down, but if you don’t ask, you’ll never know.
Get sweeteners. Sometimes, salary comes out of one budget, and other perks come out of another. If they say they can’t pay you any more in salary, go for sweeteners, like an expense account, more vacation days, a year-end bonus, a guaranteed raise in six months. I always try to pile on, asking for hair and makeup and a wardrobe reimbursement, to travel in business or first class, for a percentage of back-end profits, the bulk of my fee up front. Once, to sweeten the deal of my appearing on a reunion episode, producers gave me five pounds of the black powder that I use to make explosive art. A typical order for MythBusters, but not at your local hardware store.
Have a “fuck off price.” Would that we were all in the position that my famous friend who shall not be named is often in, when he’s asked to do a job he’s not that into, and quotes a ridiculously high amount, what he calls his “fuck off price.” If they are willing to pay it, it’s worth doing and he’ll take the job. Otherwise, he gets out of it without having to negotiate or feel awkward about saying no.
Be prepared to walk away. Women have been trained to compromise and be people-pleasers. Don’t give in to the impulse to make everyone happy during a negotiation. Know your worth and demand it. If you don’t get a respectable offer, throw down an ultimatum, and mean it. I’ve been told, “Take it or leave it,” on certain jobs, and had to say, “Leave it.” I walked away with heart palpitations and thought I might throw up, but I walked. The next day, they called and said, “Okay. We’ll meet your number. We start shooting tomorrow.” Even if it doesn’t go your way, you walk away with pride, which money can’t buy. You lost a job, but not your standards.
* * *
I would love to go Norma Rae on this issue and stand on a table in a sweaty T-shirt, holding up a sign that says Unite! We have to band together and gather data about what people make and what numbers women should push for. If you have information, you can go into any negotiation prepared. Just this week, I was talking to a woman in my field about freelance fees. I told her what I make on a gig, and gave her the contact info for my agent and suggested she ask him what she should be getting. I’ve been known to sleuth what kind of money is being offered to my male counterparts or get my agent to listen to the whispers. Then, if they make me an offer, I’m prepared to counteroffer with a fair amount. It’s underhanded, but this is war. We have to do whatever we can for fairness.
I think one of the reasons women don’t push for what they are worth is because they don’t feel they deserve it. Well, you are worth it, and you should always ask for more. Stop being shy or polite. Study after study shows women are less likely to negotiate for more and feel like they’ll be viewed unfavorably if they do. Girls are raised to be polite and accommodating, while boys are taught to be self-promoting and tough. Time to stop reinforcing gender roles especially when it comes to money. Don’t think of money as a dirty subject. It shouldn’t be a measure of worth, but it is a measure of how much you’re respected, how far you’ve come, and how hard you’re working. If no one ever talks about inequality, it’ll never change. So talk! Be a pushy woman who looks a man in the eye and says, “I’m worth more.” That squeaky wheel is gonna get greased.
MONEY CAN’T BUY HAPPINESS
I’ve been freelancing for several years now, and find that when it comes to money, I’m exactly like the Punkin Chunkers and Large, Dangerous Rocket Ship builders: My version of bliss is when I’m stimulated and challenged, and price, expense, and income have (almost) nothing to do with it. I’d rather make less (but always equal!) to work with quality people doing quality things. I might not make a ton of money that way, but I will be enriched by positive experiences.
I have taken jobs I hated for the paycheck, and have regretted it each time. Life is too short to work with awful people on a subpar product. Of course, when I take a job that fits the bliss bill, I will push to get as much money as I can and as much control over the content.
My role model for this is the mad, creative genius Steve Wozniak, inventor, engineer, cofounder of Apple, and a friend. When he was inventing the Macintosh computer in his garage, he wasn’t thinking about being rich, he was just doing what he loved. Woz is all about what makes him happy, the tech and gadgets and inspiration. He’s the player and made his life the game. Granted, he is richer than God, and can do whatever the fuck he wants. But that’s my point. He does!
For me, money has always meant security. Once I could pay my bills without worrying, was free from debt, and had my forever home, I was happy. All the rest is just icing, sweet but empty calories. Save as much as you can and invest in quality to keep your stomach and heart full.
Chapter Four
Friendship
On MythBusters, we did an episode about employing science to get past several security systems. Episodes where I could learn secret agent skills were my favorites. In one episode, we attempted to get past a room of crisscrossing infrared lasers, like in every cliché heist flick. We tried a few approaches, like blowing face powder on the beams to expose and limbo through them (of course, they had me do that one, maybe just because I am the most flexible of the crew and not because I am the only one with a compact), using a mirror to bounce away the beam, and using another laser to turn off the power source.
Another favorite was trying to fool an infrared camera into not registering the body’s heat signature. We descended through a ceiling panel and used Grant’s sophisticated articulated robot arm with a clamp attached to a small pane of glass to, in theory, block the camera and create a continuous temperature shield, allowing a person to walk into the room undetected.
The problem was, the robotic arm, with its elbows and internal pulley system for maneuvering at an odd angle, just didn’t bend the right way to get that pane of glass in front of the sensor. Grant wanted to engineer adding another joint to the arm, and I said, “Just give me, like, a broom or something.”
Hanging out of the ceiling panel, I took a broomstick and hung a piece of glass on the end and placed it on the camera.
Guess what? After all the complicated and convoluted attempts to disarm the camera, the most simple and basic idea was the one that worked. We coined it the “poke it with a stick” method.
From that day on, if our prototypes for a rig were getting more and more complicated, someone would invariably say, “Or we could just poke it with a stick.”
Friendlessness
When my class moved from elementary school to junior high in seventh grade, it was a precipitous leap from the cubbies to lockers. The junior high in Los Gatos was fed by three elementary schools, and when they all joined up, the whole pecking order of popularity had to be reshuffled.
I wasn’t a total loser in sixth grade or anything. In our small elementary school, most everyone was friends with each other. That all changed in junior high. If you didn’t notice the shift, it’s because you were popular.
During the transition, my standing in the social hierarchy fell off a cliff. In the new world order of junior high, my old friends were the ruling class, and they decided that I was too odd to walk among them. The distancing was gradual—running away from me in gym class, mocking my comments, some sneering—and then all of a sudden. A few months into the new school year, the Queen Bees did their “spring cleaning” (it was November, but whatevs). Behind my back, they said I was no longer friends with them, and that no one else should be friends with me either because I was “weird.”
In
hindsight, I can almost see their point. I was, am, weird, and proud of it. I just did not fit in. I sucked at sports and wasn’t rich or traditionally pretty. On the contrary, I was uncoordinated, skinny, and full of self-doubt about pretty much everything. Plus, my MTV-inspired style was outré, and I loved to draw pictures—a hobby deemed unacceptable by the Regina Georges of my school (and probably yours).
Like a million lonely geek girls before me (and after), I set out to win over the popular kids with cake. For my thirteenth birthday, I invited all the girls who’d dumped me to a party at my new house.
Nobody showed up.
My family and I set up a big table, with cake and candles. We rented videos from the Warehouse, including Justine Bateman’s Satisfaction. Not a single girl came to see it. I was crushed and mortified . . . and then, the doorbell rang! This one girl who’d been sick for a week and didn’t know I’d been spring-cleaned appeared. She seemed surprised to be the only one and excused herself to the bathroom. She took so long in there, I went to check on her. She’d sneaked into my bedroom to use the phone to call the other girls. I heard her say, “I’m the only person here! You have to come to this party!” They weren’t interested, apparently.
My parents were devastated for me, too, and said, “Let’s get out of here and go ice skating.” So we took this one girl to the rink and tried to manufacture some fun. It was super awkward the whole time. I felt so much worse for my parents than I did for myself. I didn’t want to disappoint them with my social ineptitude. After all, they have always been the life of the party with more friends than I could keep track of. How did they end up with me?
HOW DO YOU MAKE THE BEST OF FRIENDS?
Girls are cannibals. It wasn’t my fault that they rejected me. I wasn’t inherently repellant. It’s that the mean girls enjoyed hating me. As the mother of an eight-year-old, it’s crazy watching this stuff start at such an early age. Boys fight it out. They bond over giving each other a hard time, but their trash talk isn’t real. Girls tear each other down viciously, and it can continue on into adulthood.
The party was it for me. My status as a pariah was sealed. I knocked my head into the brick wall of popularity for a while longer, to no avail, before I realized that these girls would never be friends with me again. Those ships had sailed. I wasn’t sure why I was interested in being their friend. I guess I just didn’t want to give up a fight. Maybe I was fated to roam the earth alone like Caine (obligatory nerdy Kung Fu reference). Or not? I could just crash test my way into generating new friends.
THE STAKEOUT
I devised a plan. I focused on two neighbor girls—Yurah Kang and Lara Kemper. They were best friends, and seemed sweet. I would watch them leave their houses and meet each other in the driveway, greet each other with big smiles, and then start walking down the street toward school. I mean, come on. We lived on the same street. We were meant to be friends.
IF YOU WANT TO MAKE FRIENDS, YOU’LL HAVE TO PLOT AND STRATEGIZE TO GET THEM
I would get ready for school super early as not to miss their departure, wait at the window for them to meet, and calculate my approach. Then I would run outside at the appropriate time, and walk on the opposite side of the street with my head down, and hope they would notice me and invite me to walk with them, which, mercifully, they did. What a coincidence that I was walking to school at the exact same time! Every day!
Like I said, painfully shy.
I walked along and listened to them talk, not saying much, just tagging along, until one day, I was comfortable enough to join the conversation. Soon enough, Yurah and Lara adopted me into their clan of smart girls. (BTW: I’m still close with both of them. Lara is a biologist, and Yurah works in science tech. I couldn’t have been luckier to plot my friendship with them.)
Freshman year, I plotted again. There was a new girl at school who’d just moved to Los Gatos. She grew up in New Jersey. After talking to her for a minute—she was cool, funny, smart, and had an edgy East Coast style that was intoxicatingly exotic—I decided she was going to be my new best friend. I made a real effort to welcome the new girl and include her in my friendship circle, counteracting the exclusion of the mean girls. Before long, we were best friends—and remain so today. Twenty years after I first stalked her, we still meet for coffee every Friday.
In a way, I was like an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., assembling a ragtag team of talented, funny Super Friends (am I mixing Marvel and DC? Sorry, fangirls!) to fight evil together. But my posse was snarky, caring, and supportive, and not afraid to be smart and act stupid. I aspired to hang out with anyone who was smarter, more talented, better read, more musical, and snarkier than me, because, even then, I knew that proximity to great people would inspire me to aim higher and be a better person. You define and are defined by the people you choose to surround yourself with.
The “One Woman” Problem
I’ve seen it happen. There’s one slot for a woman, and instead of saying, “Why can’t there be two slots or a hundred?” we vie against each other. We should band together to dismantle the system that dictates the “one woman” policies.
* * *
FUN WITH MAGNETS
We used magnets on the show to test myths like whether an electromagnetic James Bond watch would deflect bullets (nope), or if you could use magnetic clamps to soundlessly scale an air-conditioning duct (nope again). Jamie had these insanely powerful magnets, which struck fear in all our hearts. If he walked in the room carrying one, in my mind anything metal would go flying across the room, like a screwdriver or a blade. But Jamie was more diligent about the safety of magnets than even the table saw. You knew a table saw was dangerous. Jamie knew the magnets could also do damage.
The beauty of magnets is their ability to attract and repel. If you line up the positive end of one magnet to the negative end of another, they will stick together. If the magnets were powerful enough, you couldn’t pull them apart with all of your strength. Or, if you tried to line up the positive end of one with the positive end of the other, you couldn’t push them together. Magnets are used for the power of their attraction and repulsion in turbines to make them spin, creating electricity. They can take off your finger, or create electricity to light up the world.
Does the principle of magnets—opposites attract—apply to friendships? Why is one person drawn to another as if she were pulled by invisible forces? For that matter, why do we instantly take a dislike to someone? A cool thing about some magnets, though, is that once they’re heated, they completely lose their ability to attract or repel. So that person you instantly hate? Or the person you are instinctually drawn to, for good or ill? If you get to know them a little better and work up a degree of human warmth toward them, you can judge them without the influence and control of unseen forces.
* * *
After the success of MythBusters, a few shows popped up that were similar to ours, and there was always the one token girl in the mix. During Q&A sessions on many college lectures, students often asked if I thought the “one girl” on the copycat shows were trying to be me, and whether I was offended.
I was so appalled by the question, I had to pause for a minute and wonder, Why are you trying to get me to insult another woman and minimize her hard work? I would reply, “There is room for all of us. I want to see more women doing science and travel on TV.”
Having to explain why I supported the women who came up behind me always put a bad taste in my mouth—sort of like choking down my thirteenth birthday cake in the days after that disaster of a party.
Let’s be more inclusive, and kind to each other. Let’s dismantle the institution of Mean Girls!
Let’s show up and make more room for all of us.
Let’s take up space.
LET FRIENDSHIP FIND YOU
The Grand Adventure
When I was just out of college, my friend Dawn and I decided to travel the world. We met a travel agent and booked a year’s worth of plane tickets. I didn’t have much money. I used
everything I’d saved or hustled since age fifteen. I sold clothes, hocked anything of value, picked up pennies, checked the change slots in phone booths and vending machines, and even went to one of those “Cash 4 Gold!” places with all the forgotten jewelry I’d collected from the lost-and-found bins at my old jobs.
I worked my butt off until the day I packed my enormous backpack, hugged my family, and jumped on a plane headed west over the Pacific Ocean. First stop Rarotonga, then Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, through Malaysia to Thailand, Japan, Nepal, India, Israel, Egypt, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, back to Egypt, Ireland, England, and home. I made my way around the world, focusing on Southeast Asia and countries where my money would go a long way.
By the time I got to Indonesia, I’d been on the road for a few months and had become a strange hybrid of punk raver girl (the persona when I left) and granola hippie (who I was becoming). I wore my spiked dog collar and black cowboy hat with yarn bracelets with bells around my ankles.
Dawn and I had so much fun discovering the world together, but parted ways (very amicably) after a few months to find our own adventures. We met up whenever we needed the safety of a companion, but we had become road warrior travelers. I found that I loved traveling alone. I don’t mind being alone. Sometimes, I feel lonely around people. I find small talk excruciating. Social scenes and parties with acquaintances are like rusty spoons digging out my eyeballs. It’s almost impossible to stand there and listen to people talk endlessly about their schedules and boring routines. I sometimes find myself just nodding and smiling and zoning out completely.