It was a "deer in the headlights" moment. What happened, happened and I am not proud of it. When I heard "The CEO wants a photo with you", I was completely pattern interrupted with the current thread of what I was doing talking to whoever it was (keyword: CEO and keyword: you) and just System.exit(1)'d (e.g. left with the PR person). I didn't realize that I'd not excused myself properly until after the photo op was done.
As a tangent, on the topic of social niceties and navigating a party situation: If you ever need to get out of the awkward "I've been talking with this one person and I really want to exit the conversation", you never want to say "It was nice meeting you.". What you want to say is this: "I'd like to go meet those people over there. Come with me." This is genius (and I learned this from a social genius) because it gives the person a choice. If they don't want to go with you, you are golden. If they go with you, you've developed your own little temporary group of 2.
