McJob

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McJob is slang for a low-pay, 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, and where workers' activities are tightly regulated by managers. Most perceived McJobs are in the service industry, particularly fast food, copy 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.

McJob was in use at least as early as 1986, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines it as "An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.""[Merriam-Webster: 'McJob' is here to stay]". The Associated Press. November 11, 2003. It was popularized in 1991 in Douglas Coupland's novel as one of the margin definitions. It was described as "a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one".Coupland, Douglas. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. St Martin's Press, 1991. p. 5 ISBN 031205436X The novel never uses the term in reference to McDonald's, though; Andy, the book's narrator, uses the term only once, in reference to the bartending job that his friend Dag does.Coupland, Douglas.

The term is used to emphasize the claim that many desirable middle-class jobs are being eliminated, either due to productivity gains (often the result of automation) or due to the shifting of operations to second- or third-world countries where labor costs are cheaper. For example, manufacturing, call-center, accounting, and computer programming jobs are not as abundant in developed countries as they used to be, as firms have looked abroad to meet these needs, frustrating many people who used to work in these industries. Such displaced workers often spent many years gaining specialized education, training, and experience, and are reluctant to start over in a new industry at the bottom rung. Many older workers may have no choice but to take a "McJob", because employers generally prefer to hire recent graduates for entry-level positions.

According to Jim Cantalupo, former CEO of McDonald's, the perception of fast-food work being boring and mindless is inaccurate, and over 1,000 of the men and women who now own McDonald's franchises started life in the working world behind the counter serving customers. Since McDonald's has over 400,000 employees, not to mention high turnover, Cantalupo's contention has been questioned as being invalid, working more to highlight the exception rather than the rule.

Others oppose the implicit criticism of service work inherent in the word McJob, arguing that a solution such as automation of these jobs would be condemned by those with the same political perspective as those who coined the term. It is argued that capital will often be attracted to those markets with lower costs in the absence of artificial barriers such as government controls. While some condemn this as globalization, others argue that this process ensures that prosperity is shared to new communities and people rather monopolizing wealth in white, English speaking markets. The emergence of a rapidly growing information technology industry in India and its attendant prosperity is one example cited.

Still others contend that a McJob is to a real job as a McDonald's hamburger is to the genuine article: a simulacrum that becomes ever more disappointing by the bite. This etymology of McJob neatly avoids the criticism of service industry workers while nonetheless lampooning the products thereof.

The word McJob was added to the world's best-selling hardcover dictionary Merriam-Webster in late 2003 [link] despite the objections of McDonald's.

In 2006, McDonald's in the UK undertook an advertising campaign to directly challenge the perceptions of the McJob. The campaign was supported by research conducted by Adrian Furnham, Professor of Psychology at University College London, and highlighted the benefits of working for the organisation stating that these benefits were "Not bad for a McJob". So confident were McDonald's of their claims that they even ran the campaign on the giant screens of London's Piccadilly Circus."[Not bad for a McJob?]" Management Issues. June 8, 2006

McJOBS, the trademark

McJOBS (plural, uppercase) was first registered as a trademark by McDonald's on May 16 1984, as a name and image for "training handicapped persons as restaurant employees". The trademark lapsed in February 1992, and [was declared 'Dead'] by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Following the publication of Generation X in paperback in October 1992, McDonald's [restored] the trademark.

During the aforementioned arguments that broke out when Merriam-Webster included "McJob" in its new entries, McDonald's officials implied the company might bring a lawsuit against the dictionary based on this trademark issue, but never went through with it.[link]

McJob

McJOBS, the trademark

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See also