It started during Covid. I had cabin fever and absolutely no desire to feed a sourdough starter. So I downloaded TikTok. Um, I don't know if you know this, but it's super addictive, and I'm still on it quite a lot. And last week I saw a crazy story. But it was so crazy that even those who aren't glued to their phones have heard about.

I'm talking, of course, about the CEO, the Chief People Officer and the Coldplay concert.

If you somehow still don't know this story, at a recent Coldplay concert, at some parts during the show, they put the camera on different people in the audience and projected it to the whole arena. Sort of like a kiss cam at a baseball game. At one point they showed a couple embracing. Whatever, that's kind of the whole point, right? Except when they realized they were on camera together, the man divebombed down to the ground, and the woman completely covered her face. Chris Martin, the lead singer, jokingly said that they're either having an affair or are just very shy. 

Someone in the audience was recording, and thought the couple's reaction was weird, so they posted the video on TikTok, and before long, internet sleuths took over.

Turns out, Martin was right. They were having an affair.

And it gets even juicier. It's not just that the couple are both married to other people. (But they are.) But the man, Andy Byron, is the CEO of tech company Astronomer. And the woman, Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot, is the head of HR for the company.

Humiliating for them and their families. But there hasn't just been a personal fallout from the incident. Astronomer recently posted on X that Byron has tendered his resignation. And they put out a statement about their company culture, etc.

It's a trainwreck that I, and millions of others, can't look away from. It's not the schadenfreude or the salaciousness. Well, it is, but it's not just that. It's the messiness of office romances, particularly with the person whose job it is to monitor that and protect the company.

So what can we learn from the whole debacle?

Dating at work always has the potential to go wrong. Every company has a different policy on interoffice dating, and you should certainly read yours. Typically if they allow for dating, you shouldn't date your subordinates, and it's probably recommended that you're not working on the same team or division. You don't want to look like you're giving the best projects to the person you're dating, or generally favor them. (As for affairs, that's none of my business—though I'm always happy to hear the dirt.) I'm sure right now everyone Cabot has written up or put on a performance plan recently is now being questioned—did Byron ask her to do that? Was she even given her own job for fair reasons? It's definitely a mess, and while hopefully if you're dating a coworker it won't go viral for the wrong reasons, you still don't want to be judged for anything other than your performance at your job.

Read the full blog.