Sacked exec who spent night drunk in sauna on work trip wins discrimination case

A female executive with ADHD who was sacked from her six-figure salary job after spending the night drunk in a sauna on a work trip has won a disability discrimination case.

Shannon Burns was let go as vice president of engineering at software company Gitpod, where she earned a staggering £220,000 a year. Her bosses claimed that their confidence in her had been eroded following a booze-fuelled team building event in Austria.

She ended up losing her room keys on one night and was unable to wake up her roommate to get back in. After giving up trying, Shannon headed to the sauna in the building and spent the night there.

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Soon after, she received a message from a senior executive saying she must 'lead the team by example' and 'stay in control'. Shannon was fired two months after the sauna incident.

The executive slammed the company as 'male dominated' and filled with 'tech bros'. She added that a male colleague was much more drunk than she had been on the trip - but faced no punishment.

Shannon, from the US, was headhunted by Gitpod in 2022 after previously working for Silicon Valley firm Slack. As well as her salary, the new job gave her access to an equity package potentially worth more than £30million.

A tribunal in Birmingham ruled that, although she had been drinking before sleeping in the sauna, she experienced a 'great deal of forgetfulness' as a result of her ADHD and that this contributed to her losing the keys.

Shannon is now in line for compensation. Employment Judge Rachel Wedderspoon, however, dismissed the worker's claims that she was the victim of gender discrimination and said her sacking was instead due to displaying 'a lack of professionalism'.

The tribunal heard how she would regularly lose items, such as keys and phone, due to her condition. In February 2023, she went as far as asking the company's HR head for an ADHD coach because she was 'deeply overwhelmed' with the her workload and suffering from intense anxiety.

Shannon said in a witness statement: "My male colleagues were drinking alcohol/drunk at the offsite but I was the only one who was dismissed. One of my male colleagues behaved in a far more damaging way for both his own reputation and for Gitpod after 'consuming alcohol' at the offsite."

Judge Wedderspoon said Shannon accepted her 'impairments were exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol', adding that she was going through a 'very difficult period' in her life and had cried and seemed drunk at the event.

She went on: '[Shannon] had consumed quite a lot of alcohol on one night of the offsite when she got locked out of her room. However, being disorganised and forgetful may be features of ADHD.

"The Tribunal found that losing her keys on the first occasion and being locked out was likely to be something arising from her forgetfulness, a feature of [Shannon's] ADHD. However, drinking alcohol is likely to have played a part of being locked out later in the evening.

"Insofar as [Shannon] was criticised for being locked out in the evening the tribunal finds that this was likely in part to be as a result of the combination of her alcohol consumption and her forgetfulness which is a something arising from her disability of ADHD."

The employment tribunal was told that Shannon had been diagnosed with ADHD in 2015. A hearing to decide on the amount of her compensation is due at a later date.