A Frenchman is suing his former employer for "bore out" - boredom's equivalent of burnout - which he says turned him into a "professional zombie". Frederic Desnard wants 360,000 euros (£300,000) for being "killed professionally through boredom" by his 80,000-euro-a-year job as an executive in a perfume business.
Okay, on 80,000 a year, consider taking up combined skydiving and shark wrestling as a hobby. That'll sort you out.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36195442
Andres Soolo I'm not contending that it would be nice to have an interesting job for everyone. I've been in an insanely tedious job before. But boring v interesting is a pretty damned hard thing to define (although there's certainly some menial tasks that virtually everyone agrees fit the boring definition), and doubly so when trying to legislate for a duty of care.
ReplyDeleteThe primary responsibility for choosing a job is the employee's, not the employer. I know it's not as simple as that, but people need to get over the idea that things should be handed out to them.
The Teacher example. Some people find teaching the single most rewarding thing they could possibly do. But this person says it's boring them. The answer is not suing the school. It's finding a different job. These people didn't accidentally get these jobs, they applied for it, got it, then bitched about it. They need to take some responsibility.
I've done envelope stuffing. There probably are more boring jobs, but it's a pretty insanely boring job. But I knew it was going to be boring as bat shit (which due to nitrates can actually be quite 'exciting'). And yes, if I had to stuff envelopes with folded pieces of paper every day for years, I'd probably go crazy(er). But I did the job for money I needed at the time, and sucked it up. There are worse things than a boring job, like no job.
And sometimes you might need a break. Or to quit. It's just a case of Person A has an unsuitable mental/emotional make-up for Job B. That usually means you can only do said job for a short while. But I'd be horribly unsuitable as a teacher, but that doesn't mean I think schools should be forced to make teachers' lives more interesting. And some really insanely boring jobs deserve to have everyone quit. But if people are willing to take the money to do them, even for a short time, then (IMHO) that's fine.
The question about people needing to take shit jobs because their country has bullshit welfare/safety-nets is a completely different question. And one I can rant on at length over as well.
Some of my best moments in career choices have been from quitting jobs. Sure it's scary. But that's what "they" have told you. It's actually really empowering.
Elie Thorne Those are all good reasons to quit. Not necessarily reasons an employer bears responsibility for a boring job.
ReplyDeleteDogmatic Pyrrhonist: Thesis: the employment law should require employers to protect employees from the harms caused by boredom.
ReplyDeleteThis court case is an attempt to argue that the existing French law already does, at least in clear-cut cases. Maybe, a court will agree. Maybe, not. But either case, I believe that the former case would be better, and laws should be changed if necessary.
It is clearly the power of the employer to define the working environment. In civilised countries, there are laws that require the employer to listen to employees — to some degree — and make special accommodation for special needs, to some degree. We don't usually allow employers to get away forcing, say, people in risk of CTS to bring their own wrist-friendly mice to work. To even suggest that, say, a coal miner developing black lung because the employer didn't provide properly safe work environment is to blame herself would amount to blaming the victim.
So it is with boredom.
If you're interested in how boredom can be objectively measured, check out PubMed #14992349, for a literary review. (DOI: <http://sci-hub.bz/10.1080/00223980309600636>.)