When you go to a Coldplay concert for some guitar and cool emotions, but leave with a broken marriage, a vacant job, and your name as a hashtag on every internet meme, welcome to the hottest saga of this summer.
If you don't know, the incident took place at a Coldplay concert on July 16 in Boston, where the CEO of the American technology company "Astronomer", Andy Byron, thought he would have a quiet night, with some live music and private hugs. But the unexpected happened, he was caught on the famous Kiss Cam hugging Kristin Cabot, not his wife, but the head of Human Resources of the company. So, someone who normally gives you a warning about flirting at work, was in a relationship with the boss. Ah, the irony.
The video went viral on TikTok, thanks to a girl named Grace, who with a simple caption "Do you know where your husband is?", created the drama of the moment. After the uproar, Grace made a live video and said honestly "I didn't want to cause drama, but when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes."
Shortly after the scandal, the Astronomer company decided to temporarily suspend both Byron and Cabot while launching an internal investigation to find out whether the "starlight romance" had any influence on company policies.
Interim CEO Pete DeJoy (co-founder of Astronomer) was put in charge while the board is reviewing every email, bonus, promotion, and “overtime meeting” to figure out whether this was a genuine romance or a story of benefits in every sense of the word.
Meanwhile, the internet is abuzz. The memes are non-stop.
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On the other hand, Kristin Cabot, also married to a CEO (of a rum company, ironically called "Privateer"), is reportedly in the process of divorcing.
And in all this, Andy Byron himself has not spoken out yet. The statement where he apologizes and quotes a line from Coldplay's "Fix You" is yet another internet game!
Meanwhile, at the offices of Astronomer — the company that builds the “Astro” platform on Apache Airflow, a system for orchestrating data (not drama) — employees are behaving like students who have just seen their teachers fight in the hallway: stunned, bewildered, and completely unprepared for this soap opera within their company. There has been no announcement yet from the company, which has over 700 global clients, including Adobe, EA, and Marriott, about the CEO’s return to duty. And at this rate, it’s easier to reconsider Pluto as a planet than to bring Andy back to the office.
