20th Century FoxCan you really sue your boss if your job is boring as hell?
Technically, yes, you can.
A man from France is suing his former employer for ‘bore out’ – the bored equivalent of burnout – which he claims turned him into a ‘professional zombie’, the BBC reports.
Frederic Desnard is suing for 360,000 euros (£300,000) for being ‘killed professionally through boredom’.
The 44-year-old said his 80,000-euro-a-year job as an executive in a perfume business was a ‘descent into hell’, which he describes as similar to a burnout, but less interesting, according to The Guardian.
Desnard claims that for four years he was expected to carry out ‘too menial’ tasks’. As a result, he was left ‘depressed, destroyed and ashamed’ and forced to resign.
The employment tribunal case is the first ever legal claim in France for a ‘bore out’.
GiphyHe told France’s BFM television:
I left for work each day with a desperate, sinking feeling.
Then when I arrived I would often break down in tears. But no one noticed because no one really cared whether I was there or not.
I was left depressed and ashamed of being paid for doing nothing.
Of course, Desnard isn’t the only employee unhappy with his job. Workplace health and safety expert Jean Claud Delgenes told the Mirror: “We estimate that around 30 per cent of the French workforce is bored with their jobs, but most stay because of their fear of unemployment.”
You could also probably add a good chunk of the British population to that list as well.
So, can you really sue your boss if your job is boring? Yes, you can – Frederic Desnard did – but you may not win.
