Friday, May 25, 2007

Fast Feud Outlet

Lord Of The Fries

McDonald's has launched a petition to get the dictionary definition of a ``McJob'' changed. The Oxford English Dictionary describes a McJob as ``an unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects''. But McDonald's says this definition is now ``out of date and insulting'' and says 90 per cent of employees agree they are given valuable training.

FOOTNOTE: Are they `arch' enemies?

12 comments:

Bart said...

I can understand their consternation, but why bother arguing...the only people who would disagree with that definition are corporate McDonalds people.

Seriously, how many times do you see a little boy or girl say "when I grow up I want to be a fry cook at McDonalds!"?

Anonymous said...

I'm actually really disappointed that the word McJob has even made it into the dictionary!

david mcmahon said...

You're so right, Bart,

I reckon Macca's have done themselves an even greater dis-service by fanning the flames of debate here.

The OED folks are not going to pulp their edition. Nor should they.

Macca's should have just left the issue alone.

Coupla years ago, R Kelly (of `I Believe I Can Fly' fame) had just finished a concert and went into a McDonald's and opted to doing some frying and served drive-thru customers - so I wrote the headline `I believe I can fry'.

Thought you'd enjoy that

Cheers

David

B.T.Bear (esq.) said...

Methinks they doth protest too much.

(an as fer the 90%, as they don't allow Unions, how wud they know if their staff are really unhappy?)

:@o

david mcmahon said...

Hi Steph,

I didn't know it was in the OED until I heard it on the news this morning.

I always thought it was a joke word.

Sometimes the corporate world should realise when to lie low and not escalate matters!

Cheers

David

david mcmahon said...

Hi BTBear,

Perfect viewpoint. You are hereby appointed captain of the Aussiejourno Blog Stars Debating team.

And I wonder how accurate the info on those employee forms would be, given the way the question is weighted.

Food (ha ha) for thought.

Cheers

David

Unknown said...

valuable training? in what? flipping the absolutely impossibly perfect round shaped patty of strange meat? pouring water over freeze dried pickles? never ever stacking anything neatly? ensuring the secret sauce is everywhere but where it should be? not hearing i wanted 2 girl happy meals and 1 boy happy meal, which resulted in three girl happy meals and a very mad eight year old boy? okay i;ll stop. i could go on. lets do hell-mart(aka wal-mart)shhhh. gerald is calming down.

SandipM said...

Six lines sandwiched between three great puns. 'Tis amazing how you cook up all this, David! Of course it may be a concern how M's chains don't spread enough dough around, and instead serve up all this PR. :-)

david mcmahon said...

Hi Animals with opinions,

I hear you loud and clear. The interesting thing is that the front-line `soldiers' at Macca's are teen school or college-age kids - who face the brunt of all the problems.

Like you, I've had botched orders, but the trick is to just move on.

At least Gerald wouldn't have a drama with his orders - he wouldn't even have to crane his neck to check!

Always good to hear from you.

David

david mcmahon said...

Hi Sandip,

Hey - there's a lot of puns in that comment of yours, you punmaster!

Take care

David

Priyanka Sarkar said...

i wonder how ths top notch companies always manage to find such minute concerns here and thr....n then stage a protest!!!
i mean debating on every damn thing has become more of a corporate jargon-ish statement than anything else.....

david mcmahon said...

Hi Priyanka,

You're 100 per cent correct. Someone's done the corporate advancement gig by taking up the cudgels with the OED - completely forgetting that no one in the world considered it an issue anyway.

Now it's been blown completely out of proportion.

This was a non-issue until today!

Cheers.

David