A worker has been awarded £12,000 after her boss told her to “stop thinking outside the box” when she requested a “breakout area” at a work party.
Sophie Stone, who is neurodivergent and dyslexic, wanted a relaxed space, fearing she would become overwhelmed at the event.
The events worker was “triggered” when her boss, Julie Knox, the events director at MA Business Limited, told her “no thinking outside the box, get back in your box”.
Ms Stone said her human right to respect has been infringed upon and went onto successfully sue her company for disability harassment, a type of disability discrimination and victimisation.
Ms Stone was awarded a £12,000 payout
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The employment tribunal in Croydon was told that Ms Stone had been diagnosed with dyslexia in 2004 and that she had “rejection sensitivity dysphoria”.
NHS guidance on autism describes the condition as “an extreme emotional response to either real or perceived criticism or rejection”.
Ms Stone was previously a hybrid employee at the company, working one day a month at its Dartford office when she started in March 2022.
The tribunal learned that Ms Stone’s poor working memory and slow information processing meant she took four hours to do a task that would take colleagues one or two hours
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The 'triggering' remark was made during a Teams meeting
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In December, the company sent out invitations to the party’s annual party in June.
Two weeks ahead of the event, Ms Stone made the request for a relaxed and informal space that employers sometimes provide for workers, which often contain soft furniture such as bean bags.
Ms Stone raised the issue once more in a Teams meeting with her boss after she said she had not received a response to her request.
She then spoke with a fellow colleague during the meeting, known as ‘JS’, about using the latter’s car as a breakout room.
Ms Knox is then said to have told the pair they should “stop being all outside the box”.
Ms Stone said: “I consider this direct harassment. Ridicule of my neurotypical is completely unacceptable and I feel that my human right to be respected has been violated.”
JS disagreed with Ms Stone’s account, saying she could not recall her boss making the remark.
Kathryn Ramsden, an employment judge, said JS’s failure to attend the tribunal meant her claims had “far less weight”.
She also pointed out that JS’s “first language is not English, and so the connotations of ‘getting back in the box’ for a neurodivergent person might not be picked up”.
The tribunal was shown a WhatsApp exchange between Ms Stone and her husband showing her distress at the comment.
She told her husband: “I’ve been going over the team meeting where Julie said ‘no thinking outside the box, get back in your boxes’ which given that I have no choice in being outside the box is really problematic for me. She is basically saying, mask, act neurotypical and don’t rock the boat.”
Ms Ramsden concluded that Ms Knox did not mean to try to “violate [Stone’s] dignity, or create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her”.
The judge said Ms Knox had instead hoped to encourage Ms Stone to “get on with” her work.
Ms Ramsden added that “being effectively told that she was ‘outside the box’ in discussing reasonable adjustments was understandably triggering for her”.
Ms Stone also won claims of failure to make reasonable adjustments, which is disability discrimination, over a failure to help her with software, and victimisation over an email.