McJob Concepts

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages

by Annelise Orleck · 27 Feb 2018 · 382pp · 107,150 words

took advantage of social media to maximize the impact of their actions. Images of shamefaced or weeping Ronald McDonalds went viral. So did the word “McJobs,” denoting dead-end work without benefits. They called on McDonald’s to “Supersize My Wages” and asked customers if they wanted “poverty fries.” These actions

…

deserve dignity and a decent life.” Some marchers carried Ronald McDonald puppets. They waved the corporate clown high. In some versions, he wept in shame. “McJobs Cost Us All,” said a popular shirt. The McDonald’s logo appeared on banners, covered by the words “Poverty Wages: Not Lovin’ It.” High school

…

vests emblazoned with a “Menu of Scandals: McShame, McSlavery, and McHumiliation.” They riffed on McDonald’s jingles. “I hate this very much,” they sang. And “McJobs hurt us all.” Near the Mirage hotel, where a man-made volcano explodes every fifteen minutes then turns into a flickering-orange waterfall, the protesters

…

just about cover franchisees’ rent. There is little profit. So franchise owners cut costs by squeezing workers.5 That’s how we got “McJobs,” says Bleu Rainer. A “McJob” is defined by Webster’s and The Oxford English Dictionary as low-paid work that offers little satisfaction and few prospects for advancement

…

. Living-wage activists say we don’t need dictionary definitions. People around the world have worked in McJobs. Many remain stuck in McJobs for their entire working lives. An estimated one in eight Americans has worked for McDonald’s itself, and with little to show for

…

Rainer, “but I never made more than $9.15 an hour or had a schedule I could depend on. That’s a McJob.” Stretch Sanders also knows about McJobs. He is trying to put himself through college on his CVS cashier’s salary.6 Sanders used to work for Carl’s Jr

…

students, 35; wages and employment practices, 9–11, 34, 71, 79; wage theft by, 99–101. See also fast-food workers; Fight for $15 movement “McJobs” term, 35, 71 McMillon, Doug, 115, 122 Mendiola massacre, 171–72, 181 Messenger Band (Cambodian garment workers), 53, 126, 131, 156 methyl bromide pesticide, 246

…

strike, 88; on impatience for change, 34; on links between poverty and police violence, 72–73; living conditions as a low-wage worker, 35; on McJobs, 71; on the “new civil rights movement,” 75; protests and actions, 9, 36, 59, 74, 77; on ubiquity of low-wage labor, 67; on working

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture

by Taylor Clark · 5 Nov 2007 · 304pp · 96,930 words

-Webster triggered a minor controversy when they decided to add one simple word to the eleventh edition of their popular collegiate dictionary. That word was McJob. Defined as “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement,” the slang term had been in common use for

…

more than a decade. But by the time the Merriam-Webster editors elected to legitimize the term, the proliferation of McJobs had become a national issue, bemoaned in bestsellers like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation; the general contention was that they were dehumanizing, tedious, dead

…

in the face” to the nation’s service workers and claiming that “a more appropriate definition of a ‘McJob’ might be ‘teaches responsibility.’ ” (In the 1991 novel Generation X, Douglas Coupland quipped that a McJob is “frequently considered a satisfying career choice by those who have never held one.”) The editors, apparently

…

convinced that the companies that created the McJobs were the ones doing the face slapping, kept the word. While the Starbucks baristas of times past needed considerable coffee expertise to perform their work,

…

,” one former Starbucks employee told me. “They’ve made it so that anyone can do it.” In other words, the position is now a textbook McJob. As if to underline this point, one source recently overheard a disgruntled barista at a Manhattan Starbucks complaining to a coworker, “You know, we’re

…

just glorified McDonald’s employees.” Calling the post a McJob in no way implies that Starbucks baristas ought to resign themselves to feeling ill-treated and disposable or that they don’t deserve union protection

…

in the service sector, their job is not a significant part of their life, so they don’t really care.” This is the dilemma with McJobs: you can’t unionize them if no one wants to keep them. Which complicates the case of IWW versus Starbucks somewhat; in a sense, both

…

perks can’t be beat. But beyond all of the bad taste and heavy-handedness, they’re both in error. In trying to unionize a McJob, the IWW organizers are attempting the impossible. But in a way, Starbucks is guilty of making them think they should do this. After all, what

…

from Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 2002). Page 241. Kamenetz, “Baristas of the World, Unite!” Page 242. For a more thorough discussion of McJobs, see George Ritzer, The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998). Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (New

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

by Douglas Coupland · 15 Mar 1991 · 169pp · 55,866 words

WE'RE SPENDING OUR CHILDREN'S INHERITANCE, a message that I suppose irked Dag, who was bored and cranky after eight hours of working his Mcjob ("Low pay, low prestige, low benefits, low future"). I wish I understood this destructive tendency in Dag; otherwise he is such a considerate guy —to

…

. Magnin store. "Date from hell," she announced, causing Dag and I to exchange meaningful glances. She grabbed a glass of mystery drink in the kitchen MCJOB: 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

…

job or life-style seemingly unrelated to one's previous life interests; i.e., Amway sales, aerobics, the Republican party, a career in law, cults, McJobs. . . . EARTH TONES: A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed outfits, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment. Earnest, frequently lacking in humor. ETHNOMAGNETISM: The

…

, TOO Five days ago—the day after our picnic—Dag disappeared. Otherwise the week has been normal, with myself and Claire slogging away at our Mcjobs —me tending bar at Larry's and maintaining the bungalows (I get reduced rent in return for minor caretaking) and Claire peddling fivethousand -dollar purses

…

person and I pay your paycheck, too." (He says this last comment as though Dag were a total prisoner of this colorful but dead -end Mcjob.) "Now where were we? Oh yeah, so the two guys turn to the guy that's been asking the questions and they say to him

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger · 15 Jul 2019 · 382pp · 114,537 words

in another city, I might have been charged for the shirts and visor. Here, I’m not. In many ways, a McJob in San Francisco is about as good a McJob as you can get anywhere because of the city’s worker-protection legislation. At $14 an hour, I’m paid almost

…

but leaves workers unable to plan their lives more than a couple of days in advance. But despite having one of the best entry-level McJobs in the country, I sometimes feel that by going with the very first place that called about my application, I’ve picked a uniquely exhausting

…

study, study, study his whole life. He ended up with a freakishly masochistic work ethic and tenure at Columbia, but he never experienced a traditional McJob. “So a couple decades ago, technology got good enough at analyzing the hour-by-hour sales data from stores for patterns, so it could make

Brave New World of Work

by Ulrich Beck · 15 Jan 2000 · 236pp · 67,953 words

of paid work. Such a history would then, in the nature of things, be full of breaks and contradictions; education would be interrupted and resumed, McJobs would often rank equally with starting up in a business of one's own, and everything would be woven together into a quite individual web

…

has to stop! … Since we became younger, we have been more productive. Hardly a single one of us does not have the strength for five McJobs! Everyone delivers five newspapers at five in the morning, then takes five dogs for a walk, then fries burgers for half the day, then helps

…

over 50 years of age and earning less than $50,000 a year are the first to be hit when jobs are divided or eliminated. McJobs What does it actually mean when someone earns so little that two or more jobs are needed to make a living? Ursula Münch has a

…

see also risk regime insurance and globalization risks social International Labour Organization Internet Italy Japan compared with USA and Fordism job-sharing, international jobs exporting ‘McJobs’ Jospin, Lionel justice deficits and ecology global and work Kant, Immanuel Kempe, Martin Keynes, John Maynard Klages, Dörte Klages, Helmut Knorr-Cetina knowledge society and

In-N-Out Burger

by Stacy Perman · 11 May 2009 · 454pp · 122,612 words

systems of burger flippers and vat fryers, floor moppers and cashiers who put on their paper hats and grease-stained aprons in what society calls McJobs and economists refer to as the requisite churn of capitalism. It was a place where people genuinely enjoyed getting up in the morning and going

…

, Youngme, et al. “In-N-Out Burger,” Case Study 9–503–096. Harvard Business Review, June 30, 2003. Newman, Jerry. My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Supersize Any Management Style. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Pinheiro, Aileen, comp. The Heritage of Baldwin Park, 2

…

denying rumor of, 128–29, 189 for fast-food giants, 99 wish list, 7 In-N-Out Burger All Stars and, 4 corporate culture v. McJobs, 140 cost-effectiveness and high volume, 47 as cultural institution, 13–14 fortieth anniversary, 165, 166 mystique of, 92, 146–48, 168–69, 287 In

Shampoo Planet

by Douglas Coupland · 28 Dec 2010

camera, which I have yet to even take out of its case, having been steered away from fashion photography and bullied into a rent-paying McJob by Stephanie. The job? I man the hellish bubbling wing computer at WingWorld, a franchise that vends those parts of the chicken that remain after

…

to be able to continue working at WingWorld to make enough sustenance to continue working at WingWorld to ... The loop of evil. Who invented these McJobs, anyway? They're work, but they're not a living. The undead working at unlabor. But WingWorld is my past, now. This afternoon here on

Bit Rot

by Douglas Coupland · 4 Oct 2016

wage is a stage-of-life thing that we all work through and gaze back on with rose-tinted glasses. When I put the word McJob in my 1991 novel Generation X, I wanted a word to describe a “low-paying, low-prestige dead-end job that requires few skills and

…

crash fifteen years ago and never went back to being middle-class again. McDonald’s campaigned for years and ultimately failed to get the word McJob struck from the Oxford English Dictionary, even renting a big screen in Piccadilly Circus in 2006 to put forth their viewpoint. The saga of this

The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work

by David Frayne · 15 Nov 2015 · 336pp · 83,903 words

yuppie lifestyle. Coupland’s novel was witty, fiercely critical, and even featured a glossary of new phrases for the Gen-Xer’s arsenal: terms like McJob (a ‘low-pay, low- prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector’), Veal-Fattening Pen (‘small cramped office workstations built of

…

–8, 141, 142–4, 146–7, 159, 169, 174, 177, 183, 186, 194, 201, 202, 205–6 maturity, definition of, 198 McDonald’s, 167, 213 ‘McJobs’, 114 McKenna, S., 109 McShit T-shirt, 213 Mead, George Herbert, 203 mealtimes see eating together meaningfulness in work, 63 meaningless work, 12–13, 22

Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future

by Jean M. Twenge · 25 Apr 2023 · 541pp · 173,676 words

about how Gen X’ers would never amount to anything and would never do as well as their parents. Generation X (1991) coined the term McJob (“a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector”) and generally gave the impression Gen X’ers weren