Friday, May 25, 2007

McJobs

So McDonald's is trying to get the OED to change its definition of a McJob.

Apparently, the existing OED definition is
"an unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects".
Mirriam-Webster had
"low-paying and dead-end work"
I'm not a huge fan of their food, but agree with McDonald's - it's an unreasonable slur to link their name with overworked underpaid slave labour with no prospects.

After all, we already have a perfectly good word for this: a post-doc.

3 comments:

John A said...

I thought it was "grad student"

C W Magee said...

Post docs shouldn't be unstimulating. And most pay OK. They just pay for a shorter time period than is required to set them up. The dead end bit is appropriate.

James Annan said...

Well I reckon a grad student is still a student and a simple job for beer money is pretty reasonable - I certainly had no complaints about the bit of teaching I did (my students might have done though, sorry guys and girls).

Chuck, you really think the pay is reasonable for a 25yo with a PhD? Maybe bearable for a single person who is used to living like a student, but some might like "luxuries" like a house and children before it's too late. It's not even as if we have the promise of future riches to make up for the extended "apprenticeship" (as say doctors do).