Security guard at Taylor Swift concert says he was fired for asking fans to share photos of him
Look what they made him do.
Calvin Denker, a security guard who went viral earlier this summer for singing along to Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer" at one of her Eras Tour concerts, says he was fired after asking fans to send him photos of himself on the job with Swift visible on stage.
"Long story short: I was fired for it," he says in a video posted to TikTok last week. Denker goes on to say that he got into trouble after admitting — in a separate TikTok video shared in June after going viral — that he had passed out notes to concert attendees asking them to text him any photos they took that he and Swift appeared in, since the security company that hired him, Best Crowd Management, has a rule against staff taking photos with talent.
In his latest video, Denker says, "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."
He continues: "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."
Best Crowd Management didn't immediately respond to EW's request for comment Tuesday.
Denker says in his video that he offered to take down his TikToks, and the company's human resources rep said she would get back to him. However, he claims he didn't hear back for more than a month and was scheduled to work an Ed Sheeran concert.
At at that event, Denker maintains, "a couple of managers talked to me just to make sure that I wouldn't be making any videos, but a lot of them were really cool and willing to give me a second chance." But after working a seven-hour shift there, he says he was ultimately approached by HR and fired for good.
Despite losing his job, Denker says he doesn't have any hard feelings about the way it all went down. "Please don't go sending any hate to this company," he says. "I just wanted to update all of you because it was a very popular TikTok for me, so I wanted to let all of you know what had happened. I still got to work one of the coolest concerts ever, and I got to work it twice, so that is fantastic, and I hold no grudges against my employer."
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