You would think McDonald’s would know a thing or two about image and marketing and how to come out more or less on top in the spin cycle. You would think that in the wake of the McLibel saga and sundry similar and related PR disasters (Super Size Me, Fast Food Nation, publicity about transfats etc), somebody high up in the company would have grasped the essential fact about bad press: jumping up and down and waving your arms around just fans the flames. Transnational corporate sooking is not only ineffectual, ridiculous and pathetic, it also makes the sooker look incredibly stupid and naive. I’m used to thinking of McDonald’s and its ilk as evil, but I always saw it as operating with a super-Machiavellian kind of smooth, skilled malevolence. Lately, though, McDonald’s media wing is acting like a n00b out of control.
The latest flaring inanity to issue from McDonald’s is a classic example of suicidal PR. They are campaigning, how seriously I can’t fathom, to get the Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘McJob’ changed. Not deleted (which would be evil, yet logical), but changed. Changed to what, exactly? A press release I read at McDonald’s UK website suggests such cognate terms as “McProspects, McOpportunity, McFlexible”…to which the mind antiphonally responds McLame? McFutile? McEmbarrassing? I wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea to encourage people to think up more “Mc” coinages, especially if you’re trying to eradicate one, but what do I know?
The BBC report makes it clear this redefine McJobs nonsense has been going on for quite some time in the UK, and it appears they had previously tried the same stunt with various US lexicographers (and failed, needless to say.) It seems customers and staff are being asked to sign a petition called “Change the Definition” which will supposedly be presented to the editors of the OED. Good luck folks. Like all respectable modern dictionaries the OED records actual usage, not what some Nietszchean language-lord decrees such and such a word ought to mean; and it’s also a historical record of the language, so even if McDonalds hypothetically did manage to collect enough signatures to make a case that the word is now generally taken to mean something other than “shite, low-paid, assembly-line junk job”, OED would still record how it’s been used in the past.
It’s such a dumb idea. I honestly don’t get it. Maybe this is the kind of arse-backwards strategic thinking required to attain global domination?
colloq. and depreciative (orig. U.S.).
An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.
1986 Washington Post (Nexis) 24 Aug. C1 (heading) The fast-food factories: McJobs are bad for kids. 1991 D. COUPLAND Generation X I. i. 5 Dag..was bored and cranky after eight hours of working his McJob (‘Low pay, low prestige, low benefits, low future’). 1993 Albuquerque (New Mexico) Jrnl. 4 Apr. C3/2 So many bright and ambitious young people are wasting what should be their apprentice years in low-wage, low-skilled jobs, what are called ‘McJobs’. 1995 Face Jan. 91/2 Up to the beginning of this year he was painting houses for a living. Name a McJob and Beck has probably done it.
That is so lame. You are so right, McDonalds should have learnt by now that defusing these sort of issues is the best policy. Hell, they had a classic opportunity to make a joke out of the whole thing by embracing the definition. McDonalds is for many people their first employer and I daresay many valuable skills are learned while working there. They could easily turn this thing around if they used their heads for a fraction of a second longer.
I think it’s hilarious, but I don’t agree that it’s dumb marketing. I think most people who buy Big Macs do it because they’re there, they’re cheap, they’re open at midnight etc… Constant repetition of the McName is enough - acting stupid gets them in the news to say McDonald’s a few more times.
Or maybe I’m just hungry, and even though I’m vegetarian, I’m still thinking: mmmm….burgers…
Straight out of a corporate version of 1984. I wonder if the idea will seem as ridiculous in another 20 years. There’s alot propaganda crap that we take for granted today that would have seemed laughable even ten years ago.
If you take the intent of the construction as meaning “something less than the full, proper meaning of the suffix”, this approach has potential. On one hand, might I suggest:
McInvasion;
McWorkChoices; and
McFear campaign.
To which one might reply:
Economic McManagers;
or even:
McPM.
While I agree that the whole thing is silly, I find it even sillier that McDonald’s hasn’t yet figured out how the language game has come to be played.
McJobs are disproportionately filled by people of color. Therefore to disparage these jobs as demeaning, is a form of hate speech.
The word ‘McJob’ can now be banned and expunged from all media on the grounds that it is racist.
That was easy, wasn’t it. Hey McDonald’s — where’s my check?
Wikipedia to the rescue, showing how easy it is for PR campaigns to manipulate entries there. The Wikipedia entry for McJobs earnestly tell us that:
Tony, they say that like it’s a good thing. Thanks for the very interesting link. The Wiki page links to entries on McMansion and McChurch, which sent me back to OED: McMansion is there, in an entry about the Mc- prefix in general.
I guess the whole process is meant, as Grimble Grumble implies, to be like a corporatised version of the grassroots way that groups labelled with derogatory & demeaning names sometimes reclaim those names.
It’s not remotely like that, however.
Changing the global consensus on Mcmansions is probably the next step.
Hey, here’s an idea: take out copyright on all possible variations of ‘Mac’ and ‘Mc’ and then sue all Scots. And people with Scottish ancestry. And so on.
Jeez, if this works they’ll get so much money out of those pirates at Apple, they’ll never have to make another burger again.
Hmm …
Maybe we should get behind this.
Hey, here’s an idea: take out copyright on all possible variations of ‘Mac’ and ‘Mc’ and then sue all Scots. And people with Scottish ancestry. And so on.
Jeez, if this works they’ll get so much money out of those pirates at Apple, they’ll never have to make another burger again.
Laddie, are you no aware of how stingy we Scots are? You’ll no get our money out of us.
Nice to see you posting again Laura!
Uh oh.