According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a McJob is a job that’s low-paid and offers little opportunity to get ahead. An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector. McDonald’s isn’t happy about that dictionary definition and has publicly complained that it isn’t fair to the company. But the dictionaries insist that that’s what the word actually means: a McJob is a job that doesn’t promise much of a future.
But:
“McDonald’s is in some ways a toy company, not a food company,” says one retired fast food executive. Indeed, McDonald’s is perhaps the largest toy company in the world. It sells or gives away more than 1.5 billion toys every year. Almost one out of every three new toys given to American kids each year comes from McDonald’s or another fast food chain.
So that’s all right, then.
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Apr 26th, 2006 at 10:40 am
JOhn,
This is hilarious. Why don’t they name Macdonalds as the biggest toy company that is also a food company? That way a McJob can become more respectable.
J
Apr 26th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I read something last year which bizarrely stated that McDonalds was also the biggest retailer of pre-packaged fruit in the UK. Shipped more volume than anyone else.
So thats alright then
May 4th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
I wonder how those toys are made. And where.
Hm.
May 4th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Those toys are mainly made by children in Chinese sweat-shops. The following is extracted from The Guardian of the 24th April 2006:
McDonald’s Happy Meal toys are manufactured in countries where the prices are low. On the bottom of these toys you often find the phrase “Made in China”. Too often the lives of the workers who make Happy Meal toys are anything but happy. In 2000, a reporter for the South China Morning Post visited a factory near Hong Kong. The factory made Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty toys for McDonald’s Happy Meals. Some of the workers at the factory said they were 14 years old and often worked 16 hours a day. Their wages were less than 20 cents (11p) an hour - almost 30 times less than the lowest amount you can pay an American worker. They slept in small rooms crammed with eight bunk beds without mattresses.