McDonald's is trying to redefine this Generation X slacker term to mean something better than an "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector". Good luck.
Well that's what struck me first when I read this in the FT this morning, I thought it is never going to happen. No way. Then I did a straw poll and was shocked. Yes, that's right folks, shocked, to find that two of our twenty-something reporters looked at me blankly when I asked if they knew what a McJob was.How did that happen? Pretty easily, is the answer. McJob is tied up with Douglas Coupland's novel 'Generation X'. A classic to be sure and one that is indelibly associated with me being a student, grunge and general slackerdom.But that book was published in 1991, the same year Richard Linklater's film 'Slacker' came out, and now no one it seems under the age of 25 has a clue what you're talking about when you mention the phrase McJob.We were here just over a year ago when I blogged about it after McDonald's tried to take ownership of the McJob label in an ad campaign.The campaign tried to put a positive spin on the word that has for long been used to describe anyone working in McDonald's or any other low-paid and low-prospects environment. It still does.And no matter what the ads say ("McProspects – over half of our executive team started in our restaurants. Not bad for a McJob.) flipping burgers does not look like a career option of choice for many.Go into a McDonald's and you know it's true. Go see Richard Linklater's new movie 'Fast Food Nation', which opens in six weeks time (it is excellent, btw), and you will not want to go near the food ever again.Still McDonald’s is trying to change the way we see McJob and ultimately it. This time it wants to get British dictionary publishers to revise their definitions of the word McJob from it classic low paid status.McDonald's argues the term is out of date and out of touch with reality and "most importantly it is insulting to those talented, committed, hard-working people who serve the public every day".It might be, and I can see that, but the image goes so deep, way past the counter staff in your local restaurant that it is a hard thing to change, but as I already found today, apparently not as hard as you might have thought.And the Oxford English Dictionary seems to agree. It said that it "monitors changes in the language and reflect these in our definitions, according to the evidence we find".
So maybe, but here is a question. 'Fast Food Nation' is on the way, McDonald's is about to be under the spotlight again so why draw attention to yourself? Answers on a postcard.
Gordon Macmillan
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