Excuse my jumping on a temporarily popular bandwagon, but a meme which has appeared within the past few days has much to be unpacked beyond the obvious. That’s part of what I do here.
The incident in question involves a corporate CEO and another employee in a high-ranking position, namely Andy Byron, the head of a tech company called Astronomer, and the company’s Human Resources officer named Kristin Cabot. During a concert by the band Coldplay in Massachusetts, the couple were picked up by camera crews looking to share the audience’s experiences on the Gillette Stadium’s huge (22,000 square feet) jumbotron screen. It’s their job to find happy pairs enjoying what the stadium is offering, whether it’s a New England Patriots game or Chris Martin singing up a storm in live performance.
It appears that Byron has been married for an estimated decade (exact figures were sketchy at this time) to Megan Kerrigan Byron, who has since taken her married name off her social media tag and left Instagram. Not a good sign. As for Ms. Cabot, married to Andrew of Privateer Rum (a distillery founded some 200-years ago), she and her spouse of about two years are rumored to have bought a house five months ago.
The depth of the pair’s relationship is still speculative, but one can only guess at how long these supposedly dedicated spouses were picking up spare change romantic feels with their respective sidepieces (excuse the terminology). This didn’t just happen overnight.
The fact that these two planned the concert outing, lied to their spouses about where they would be, went there and publicly showed affection indicates they did not feel there would be consequences. At least not until a camera technician trained their equipment on them in a clutch under the assumption that they were a typical pair of Coldplay fans.
The results were a disaster. Fortunately it doesn’t appear that the concert was a multi-person event. The Astronomer company has said that no other employees were around the pair when the footage appeared, though a woman to their right seemed equally embarrassed to have been caught on camera. Perhaps she called out sick that afternoon from wherever she worked. The company placed Byron on leave while an investigation began (Cabot’s status was not revealed).
In a work environment in which corporate compliance, along with the requirements that come with it, stress professionalism and decorum in all work and interpersonal relationships, this may well be a terminal knell for Byron at the very least, and Cabot may well follow. Of what value would enforcement of accountability be if both parties were not held to task for what they did?
The most recent piece of news is that Byron has resigned his position.
The camera zoomed in on the pair in a comfortable, forward-facing embrace, with Byron cuddling Cabot until they recognized themselves and broke contact. He ducked out of sight as she turned her reddening face away, and the third person to their right put a hand in front of her temple as if to block out what she suddenly realized was an awkward moment. Chris Martin ad-libbed, “Either they’re having an affair, or they’re just very shy.” Sounds like the former, Chris.
What happened afterward may set a record to surpass the “wardrobe malfunction” moment for Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson in terms of visually altered spoof clips featuring every possible odd couple in pop culture being caught embracing the wrong partner. One compared the clip to a scary moment in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even one of pro baseball’s mascots, the Philly Phanatic, got in on the trend with a green furry, blond-wigged partner for laughs.
What the past 72 hours have done, however, is much more than simply offering up an example of humans making horrible mistakes in public. Two marriages will suffer, as will the in-laws and other friends and relatives on both sides. The companies’ staff members will need to handle the fallout from a poor example set by people who are supposed to set a quality example.
It is never wise to think that a private affair stays that way in public. It was a devastating lesson for two people who should have known better, and a cautionary tale for those who might be considering such an adventure.
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