We’re all familiar with burn out from being overworked. It’s a common problem. One man in France is now trying to get paid €360,000 ($402,933.60) for an issue he’s dubbing “bore out.” His job was so damn boring it drove him mental.
Frédéric Desnard, 44, from Paris, has accused his ex-employer, a prestigious perfumes company, of subjecting him to something far worse: being bored stiff.
He said bosses at Interparfum stripped him of his real managerial role and instead foisted mind-numbingly dull tasks on him over a four-year period.
Sounds kind of like a dream, right? Getting paid a salary to sit around and do jack shit all day. Turns out, it sucks.
Mr Desnard described the process as “an insidious descent into hell, a nightmare” that led to him suffering from a host of health problems, including “epilepsy, ulcers, sleep problems and serious depression”.
“I went into depression, I was ashamed to be paid to do nothing,” he told AFP. “The worse part of it was denying this suffering,” he said. He was fired in 2014 after seven months’ sick leave.
It’s funny that the company was willing to pay him a salary to sit around and do nothing all day but not in his own home. “If we’re paying you, you do nothing in our office!”
The entire case is now hinging on Desnard’s lawyer proving that “bore out” is actually a thing.
While the term “bore out” is not recognised by French law, Sylvain Neil, a labour law specialist said that France’s higher court had to date recognised 244 cases of employees being “intentionally sidelined”, which it ruled was tantamount to “moral harassment”. One French researcher estimated that around 30 percent of French workers suffer from “bore out”, reported France Info.
Here’s to hoping Desnard wins his fight. It will give us all one more thing to sue for. I mean “shoot for.”
[via Telegraph]