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Man Wins $45,000 In Lawsuit Against Employer Over “Boring Job”

By Akinwale Akinyoade

11 June 2020   |   8:47 am

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A French man Frederic Desnard has won an unusual lawsuit against his employer whom he sued because his job was so boring that he was left depressed and forced to quit. Desnard worked as a manager at a Parisian perfumery until 2015. In 2016, he made headlines after he sued French perfumery Interparfum for $400,000 In the…

Frederic Desnard | Blesk

A French man Frederic Desnard has won an unusual lawsuit against his employer whom he sued because his job was so boring that he was left depressed and forced to quit.

Desnard worked as a manager at a Parisian perfumery until 2015. In 2016, he made headlines after he sued French perfumery Interparfum for $400,000

In the lawsuit, he claimed his job was so boring that at one point, it made him suffer an epileptic fit and left him feeling depressed.

He also claimed that the company signed him off work for several months, and later used his prolonged absence as an excuse to fire him in 2014.

He slammed a lawsuit against the company and after four years of litigation, the 48-year-old has been awarded a compensation of $45,000.

Paris’s appeals court ruled that Desnard suffered from “bore out”, which is technically the opposite of burnout, where an employee is overworked.

At the time Desnard sued in 2014, “bore out” wasn’t even a term recognized by French law.

However, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled that bore out was indeed a form of moral harassment.

It didn’t order Interparfum to pay its former manager $400,000 as he had originally requested, instead opting for little over 10 percent of that as compensation.

The former manager’s lawyer claimed that the complete lack of stimulation at work had left the man feeling “destroyed” and “ashamed”, even triggering an epileptic fit when he was driving.

“I went into depression,” Desnard told AFP in 2016. “I was ashamed to be paid to do nothing. The worse part of it was denying this suffering.”

Many would have considered getting paid to do next to nothing a dream job but Desnard considered it “a descent into hell.”

He was reportedly asked to do nothing but menial tasks over the course of four years. These tasks allegedly involved setting up the CEO’s new tablet and letting a plumber into his boss’s home.

Interparfum defended itself by arguing that  Desnard had not complained about his boring job and lack of stimulation during his four years at the company, but only after learning that he was going to be made redundant.

This is the first such verdict of its kind in France and may lead to future cases of employees suing their employers for lack of work or boredom.