First, I apologize if mathoverflow is a bad fit for this question, but it is the only place where I can think to get advice from professionals given my circumstance. I'm also sorry about any vagueness in my post since I need to make sure I maintain anonymity - anonymity is also why I can't get advice from folks in my department.

The short story is that I am a graduate student in a math related field and have been reached out to by a faculty member for writing up a paper about something we discussed to be submitted to a low ranking Mathematics journal. The material is very basic, coming very close to being trivial observations, and happens to be of, I suspect, no interest to anyone anywhere. Anyone who cared to prove what we proved would probably be able to do so within a day at most, if the results aren't already well known. At best, I think the results make good homework problems.

Despite this, the faculty member seems excited about it. He works in a field that another faculty member has described as "toxic" to getting a job in academics, which is my ultimate goal, and advised me that I would probably be smart to leave papers in this research topic off my C.V. unless it is accepted to a top-tier journal.

I'm in the strange position of working on this paper because I don't want to alienate him or offend him, but I'm hoping that the paper is rejected just so that my name isn't attached to the paper. This will be my first article submitted for publication, and I'm a little uneasy about even having random editors - who I conceivably could run into in the future - viewing the work.

So, my question to you: is this sort of thing worth getting worked up about? Should I just go along with it, figuring that it is highly unlikely that it will negatively impact my career, or is there some legitimate concern? Is there a chance that publishing trash might help me just because it increases my publication rate?