Woman sued company after they fully paid her for 20 years without giving any work

A woman who worked at a company for 20 years is deciding to sue them for offering her no work - despite being paid in full during ths entire time.

Laurence Van Wassenhove claims she was ordered to do no work and is looking to sue for harassment and discrimination.

However, the French national was paid in full over the two decades she was in the role at Orange mobile.

While almost everyone I know would do anything to have a job that pays you for nothing, Laurence says that it has been 'very hard to bear' over the years.

She explained to FTV that she can't handle being excluded at work for much longer, even though the company claimed that they changed her role to account for her disability.

The mum-of-two is a trained HR assistant, though she was offered a new position as a result of her health conditions.

Orange is being sued by the employee for their actions (Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Laurence suffers from epilepsy and hemiplegia, which is a paralysis that only affects one side of the body. As a result, she could not go to work.

One of her children is autistic and while she was paid in full for her role, she couldn't avoid being issued eviction notices and experiencing financial troubles.

Having been employed as a civil servant by the mobile service company, she was later offered a secretary position to help with her health needs.

In 2002, shortly after the company formerly known as France-Télécom was taken over by Orange, she requested to transfer to a different region in France.

Following an occupational medicine report that revealed she wasn't fit for the position, she was put on standby.

In a move that Laurence said made her feel like an 'outcast secretary', the company put her on standby, then sick leave, before presenting the option of retirement as a result of her disability.

But in this time, she was paid in full despite being given no work to do, as she claims she was being forced to quit her job.

Laurence says she feels like an outcast at the company (FTV)

Laurence further claimed after a complaint to the government and High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination back in 2015 that not much imporved.

"Being paid, at home, not working is not a privilege. It's very hard to bear," she admitted of the unfulfilling situation.

As a result, her lawyer David Nabet-Martin claims that she now has mental health issues such as depression due to being isolated for so long, as he claimed she was deprived from 'having a place in society' as a disabled person.

Orange said in a statement to French outlet La Dépêche that they ensured she was in the best condition after taking her 'personal social situation' into consideration.

The mobile company even claimed that she was lined up for a return to work in a new position, though it never came to fruition as Laurence was regularly on sick leave.

LADbible has reached out to Orange for comment.