Man awarded £33,000 because his job was so boring

Everyone’s had one of those days where procrastination creeps in and consumes the rest of the working day. Well, one man from Paris was bored of being bored which led to serious health conditions and him suing the company.

Frederic Desnard was awarded a jaw-dropping €40,000 (£33,000) after finding his job so boring that it led to health problems.

In 2020, Interparfums, a luxury perfume maker, handed the former employee a payout after his lawyer described his condition as ‘bore-out.’

Desnard was made redundant in 2014 after being on sick leave for seven months. Le Monde reported that his bore-out worsened and caused him to have an epileptic fit while driving, leaving him in a coma for several days.

He ended up completing around “20-40 minutes work each day” for four years, describing it as a “descent into hell.”

He explained: “I no longer had the energy for anything. I felt guilty and ashamed to earn a salary for nothing. I had the impression I was invisible at the company.”

Desnard continued his legal battle and complained to a labour relations tribunal where he demanded €360,000 in damages. The court ultimately agreed that bore-out constituted a “form of harassment”, and the Paris Appeal Court supported the case.

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While bore-out is a phenomenon related to burnout, they do have their differences.

According to Mental Health UK, burnout is a state of “physical and emotional exhaustion. It can occur when you experience long-term stress in your job, or when you have worked in a physically or emotionally draining role for a long time.”

Some symptoms are often identified as feeling tired or drained, self-doubt, or overwhelmed. They have some overlapping characteristics to that of anxiety, with 68% of UK adults mistakenly identifying burnout symptoms as being anxious.

Bore-out, however, is a psychological disorder that causes physical illness, mainly driven by mental underload at the workplace. Fifteen per cent of all workers are on the path to bore-out, Swiss stats by Werder and Rothlin suggested.

And just like that, we are all suddenly feeling “bored at work.”