Eras Tour Security Guard Probably Shouldn’t Have Made Viral TikTok About Getting Photos With Taylor Swift
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A security guard who went viral for singing along with Taylor Swift during her concert in Minneapolis earlier this summer said he was fired from his gig after asking fans to take and send photos of him with the pop star in the background.
Back in June, Calvin Denker was seen widely on TikTok after Swift’s first show in Minneapolis, casually mouthing along to “Cruel Summer” as he kept a watchful eye on the crowd and his back properly turned from the stage. In a follow-up, Denker said that after the “Cruel Summer” video went viral, he came up with a plan to snag some additional photos of him and Swift, especially after realizing just how close she got to him at his security post near the catwalk extension of her stage.
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Of course, one of the rules of the security gig is you can’t use your own phone, and you definitely can’t turn from the crowd and watch the show. So, Denker typed up and laminated some cards, which he passed out to folks near him in the crowd. He politely asked fans to take some photos of him whenever Swift was nearby and then text them to him.
By all accounts, it was an ingenious scheme — except Denker probably should’ve just thanked the fans who sent him photos and kept it to himself, rather than discuss it on a viral TikTok with 1.6 million views. Remember kids, clout carries consequences, and in a TikTok released last week, Denker revealed that the security company had fired him over the incident.
“They said that they had a rule against taking photos with any of the performers, and the main issue that they had was with my follow-up video where I said I handed out pieces of paper to the people in front of me to ask to be sent any photos that I made my way into,” Denker said. (Not to be a total buzzkill, but Denker didn’t exactly ask for photos of Swift he just happened to appear in; the card he passed out literally reads: “Can you please take a photo of me with Taylor Swift behind me and text it to [me].”)
Still, Denker defended his position, saying, “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.”
To be fair Denker, it does sound like the security firm he worked for did a really poor job in terminating his employment. After first being told he was fired, Denker asked if he’d be able to keep his job if he removed the TikTok. He claimed the HR person he spoke to said she would check and get back to him, but a response never came. Weeks later, he was scheduled to work another show, Ed Sheeran; when he showed up, he said some of the managers talked to him to make sure he wouldn’t be making any other videos but were otherwise “really cool and willing to give me a second chance.”
Denker said he completed seven hours of his shift at the Sheeran show, at which point he was told to go speak to the same HR person that had tried to fire him a month prior. Denker said she was “upset with me for still working even though I was assigned more shifts, and I hadn’t heard anything back from her.”
Despite everything, Denker remained pretty magnanimous, imploring fans not to “send any hate” to the security company. “I still got to work one of the coolest concerts ever, and I got to work it twice,” he said. “So that is fantastic. And I hold no grudges against my employer.”
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