Can McDonald's Alter the Dictionary? (McJobs)

Time.com ^ | June 5, 2007 | Christopher Thompson

[bamahead]

The late Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that the meaning of a word was derived from the way it is used in language. Not according to McDonald's. The fast-food giant is currently lobbying dictionary publishers to change the meaning of the word McJob — or remove it altogether — on the grounds that it denigrates the company's employees.

First used some 20 years ago in the United States to describe low-paying, low-skill jobs that offered little prospect of advancement, the term McJob was popularized by the author Douglas Coupland in his 1991 slacker ode Generation X, which chronicled the efforts of a "lost" generation of twenty-somethings to escape their dead-end jobs in an attempt to find meaning in life.

In 2001, the term finally entered the Oxford English Dictionary, which defined it as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector." And it has remained there ever since. But not for much longer if McDonald's gets its way.

The company is leading a "word battle" on behalf of the wider service sector. The object, according to David Fairhurst, a senior vice-president of McDonald's, is to change the definition of McJob to "reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding ... and offers skills that last a lifetime."

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This time, however, could be different — not least because of the size of McDonald's war chest and its lobbying power. The campaign has already the garnered the support of heavyweight business figures such as Chambers of Commerce Director General David Frost. More impressively, Conservative party Member of Parliament Clive Betts last week introduced a motion into Britain's parliament condemning the pejorative use of McJob. Betts believes the OED should redefine the term....

[Old Professer]

They can fork up their garden all they want but they better leave my back forty alone.

[Old Professer]

Wait until they come after the Mclawyers.

[cynwoody]

It takes more than a McJob to afford a McMansion.

[Cacique]

McJob:

(1) What the Washington elite would like every American to have after amnesty is granted to illegal aliens and employment wages equal those of China and other countries with slave labor. (2) The type of jobs that the upper and lower middle classes will be relegated to so they can't compete with the children of the oligrachical elites.

[cynwoody]

McDonald's is all you make of it

E.g., http://www.westword.com/2005-11-03/news/mr-big/

[gondramB]

>>I agree, as far as starter jobs go McDonald’s is a great choice for a teenager who needs some spending cash. I went to high school with a guy who worked there back in ‘81 and he is still there, I think he is a district manager now pulling down quite a nice income.

McDonald’s is all you make of it, if you want to use it to your advantage for what it is.<<

I think that can be true of the service sector in general. Take kids who bag groceries.

I just read about an Ingles grocery manager who started as a bag boy and was making over $100,000 a year.

Unfortunately the reason his salary was in the paper was to make the point that the $7,000 he embezzled was small compared to his salary. He claimed Ingles canceled Christmas bonuses so he stole money to pay the employees himself.

Obviously, stealing is bad, but if he was making $100k in a small town in North Carolina and would steal to help his employees it doesn’t sound like such a dead end, thankless situation.

[fr_freak]

I worked at McDonald’s when I was fifteen. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it makes quite an impact on you when you realize that the money is yours - not because it’s simply in your pocket, but because you earned it.

[Eastbound]

"The purpose of dictionaries is to describe, not to prescribe. It's a word if people are uttering it."

I think that's the way it should be too. However the word, 'marriage' was arbitarily re-defined by at least one major dictionary publisher. It now includes the union of homo on homo, or allows for that definition.

Co-incidentally, that happened at the same time the Mass. Supreme Court re-defined the word, 'marriage' to include homo on homo as well.

Therefore, of course, if it's legally defined in the dictionary as homo on homo, it's legal.

As I said. the timing was just a co-incidence. Uh huh.

[BlazingArizona]

How can McDonald’s censor a dictionary? Or censor people’s usage of the term “McJobs”? If people use that term, and understand what it means, that’s why it’s in the dictionary.

It's typical corporate arrogance. These people believe that the DMCA enables them to walk on water, compared to which changing cultural history to suit themselves seems like a lesser miracle.