Featured Image Credit: Kevin Winter/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management/TikTok/@anmaloney
Topics: Music, US News, Taylor Swift, TikTok
Jess Hardiman
Topics: Music, US News, Taylor Swift, TikTok
A security guard at a Taylor Swift concert has said he was fired after asking fans to take pictures of him in front of the stage.
Calvin Denker went viral after a concertgoer filmed him enjoying himself as he worked at Swift’s Minneapolis show earlier this year.
“Security guard carried section A2!” a TikToker wrote as they posted the clip back in June.
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Denker, who worked for security company Best Crowd Management, was seen singing along to the star’s hit ‘Cruel Summer’.
But after his online fame, he later claimed he had been fired from his job – not for singing away heartily during the concert, but for getting audience members to take photos of him.
He explained in his own TikTok video, posted at the end of June: “After night one, I was realizing how close Taylor Swift was getting to me, so I really wanted to get a photo to document it.
“So I handed down these little pieces of paper that said I wasn’t allowed to have my phone out, but if Taylor Swift comes right behind me, please take a photo of me and text it to my number.
“And I handed this out to a couple of people in the front row for night two and they were really kind and really sweet about it.”
The woman who posted the viral video was not among those Decker passed a note to.
In an update a few days ago, the former security guard said: “Long story short, I was fired for it.”
He said that shortly after his first TikTok video, Best Crowd Management fired him for a rule that prohibits staff from taking pictures with performers, adding how the company hadn’t liked him handing out the notes.
“Beyond that, the HR woman who called me wasn’t able to articulate exactly what I did wrong, because I didn’t do anything beyond asking for photos, which is what happens at any other concert, with the only exception being that I made sure I got any that I was included in,” Decker continued.
“Every photo of me from that night was from behind the barricade like any other photo from a fan would be. I never took my own phone out. And above all else, I made sure that Taylor Swift was safe and all the fans had a good time. As long as I was at that concert, I was doing my job.”
Decker said he offered to delete his first TikTok video, at which point HR said they would come back to him on it.
He then worked an already-scheduled job at an Ed Sheeran concert at US Bank Stadium, saying it seemed many of his managers were willing to give him a ‘second chance’.
However, after working the seven-hour shift at Sheeran’s show, he was allegedly officially fired.
The same HR representative was ‘upset’ at him for still working, even though he had been ‘assigned more shifts’ and hadn’t heard anything back from the company.
Decker added: “I still got to work one of the coolest concerts ever, and I still got to work it twice, so that is fantastic.
“And I hold no grudges against my employer.”
UNILAD has reached out to Best Crowd Management for comment.