Talk:McJob

I'm pretty sure this term was popularised, if not invented, by w:Douglas Coupland in his book w:Generation X. Perhaps it was slang in his area already. In any case, here are the earliest examples I can find on Usenet with Google Groups:

• McJobs: misc.headlines - 29 May 1991 by Alex McPhail: [1]
• McJob: sci.edu - 19 Jan 1992 by dallas kachan: [2]
• Mc Jobs: alt.dear.whitehouse - 23 Jul 1994 by Joe Bissot: [3]
• Mc-job: alt.recovery - 10 Jan 1996 by ceri howard: [4]
• Mc Job: alt.support.depression - 19 Jan 1996 by owen thomas: [5]

— Hippietrail 03:07, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, it was already old enough in 1986 to be used even by the Washington Post, not known for coinages:

The OED definition, which cites a 1986 story in The Washington Post, is: "An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector." [6]

Also, i propose that this lemma be changed to mcjob; there is no logical or lexicographic reason to spell this as if it were a proper noun or a trademarked term.

Precedent in major dictionaries is no excuse and only a sign of increasing and shocking sloppiness and/or illogic in these publications in deferring to popular usage in capitalisation although this clearly often does not make a distinction between proper and common nouns. In addition, popular usage was obviously first referring to jobs only at McDonald's, so there was even a "logical" reason for capitalisation according to the inherent illogic of the English capitalisation tradition exemplified by sociology/Egyptology (pro egyptology or at least Egypt-ology). And w:McWords at [7] is also erroneous as well as most of the terms it lists that were not coined and are not used by McDonald's.

What is perhaps even more shocking or at least surprising than the sloppiness of the OED and other major reference works in this case is that McDonald's lawyers were/are so incompetent, that they implicitly threatened to sue Merriam-Webster for including a living word of the English language, but didn't think of demanding that the term be spelled as what it is, a common noun, instead of something exclusively McDonald'sian. (Even Hormel Foods had enough knowledge of English spelling or enough intelligence to get a competent linguistic expert's opinion to demand the differentiation SPAM/spam.) I will contact major dictionaries and McDonald's about this (these) incredible goof(s). --Espoo 11:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

edit rollback

Restored formatting to Paul's version, as per WS:ELE. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

warning ... McDonalds on the warpath

According to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6469707.stm McDonalds are trying to change the definition of McJob. Keep alert for any sneaky changes to the definition here at Wiktionary.