McJob

The term McJob first appeared in print on August 24, 1986, in a Washington Post column by George Washington University sociologist Amitai Etzioni titled "The Fast-Food Factories: McJobs Are Bad for Kids." Etzioni argued that the highly routinized jobs at fast-food restaurants undermined school attendance, imparted few transferable skills, and distorted teenagers' understanding of what work could be. The jobs offered the appearance of employment without the substance of development.

Douglas Coupland popularized the term in his 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, defining a McJob as "a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one." The definition entered Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2003 over McDonald's objections. CEO James Cantalupo denounced the inclusion in an open letter. Merriam-Webster responded that it stood by the accuracy and appropriateness of its definition.

In 2007, McDonald's UK launched a public petition to change the Oxford English Dictionary's definition. Many McDonald's employees refused to sign, on the grounds that the existing definition was accurate. The OED's entry, dating to its online third edition in 2001, defines McJob as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector."

The word named something the service economy was producing at scale. As manufacturing employment declined across developed nations in the late twentieth century, the jobs that replaced them were disproportionately in retail, food service, and other sectors where work was standardized, wages were low, and the worker was designed to be interchangeable. McJob gave that structural reality a name borrowed from the company that had perfected it.