Skip to main content

McJob

McDonald's may even sue the OED to take McJob out of the dictionary but that will likely not help the cause of the word itself - a McJob will remain a McJob complete with all depreciatory connotations until the nature of a McDonald's job fundamentally alters.

Its interesting how a word after being around for a while acquires a life of its own and not even purging it from the dictionary will kill it. In fact, the use McPower to bully OED would make the McJob even more Mc (if there is such a thing). Taking the OED by the horns may be one thing, but the power of the masses these days is vested in Wikipedia where a McJob after a disclaimer about neutrality is described thusly:

McJob is
slang for a low-paying, low-prestige job that requires few skills and offers very little chance of intracompany advancement. Such jobs are also known as contingent work. The term McJob comes from the name of the fast-food restaurant McDonald's, but is used to describe any low-status job - regardless of who the employer is - where little training is required, staff turnover is high, and where workers' activities are tightly regulated by managers. Most perceived McJobs are in the service industry, particularly fast food, coffee shops, and retail sales. Working at a low paying job, especially one at a fast food restaurant, is also often referred to as flipping burgers.

Comments

Musings.. said…
I do agree.. the word will live on.. like you say and will have a life of its own!!
Anonymous said…
It works like this. Mcjob will live on. I will do everything in my power to make certain it goes on with its negative definition.
My promo site is www.ihaveamcjob.com
ihaveamcjob.com/mcblog

Bitter Mcdonald's worker

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...