Coupland joins "McJobs" debate

Writer Douglas Coupland - who popularized the word, McJob in his acclaimed 1991 novel Generation X - is surprised it's taken so long for McDonald's to officially protest.

McDonald's chairman Jim Cantalupo publicly lost his patience this month with the way the word is being used to describe dead-end work, particularly for young people.

Mr. Cantalupo wrote a letter denouncing Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for using McJob in its new edition, where the word is defined as "a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement."

The McDonald's boss called on Merriam-Webster to remove the offending word from its next edition, saying it was "a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women who work hard every day in America's 900,000 restaurants."

Mr. Coupland - who 12 years ago defined a McJob as "a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector" - is unrepentant.

"I've always kinda wondered why the highly litigious McD's never went ape on this one years ago," Mr. Coupland said from his West Vancouver home.

Rather than backing down, the famous author of eight books took delight in satirizing McDonald's for the way it has taken a Scottish prefix and coined a series of corny corporate terms, including McCheese, McWorld and even McJob (which it used in 1984 to describe work for disabled people).

Said Mr. Coupland: "Let me speak up for the millions of Scots . . . everywhere in expressing our annoyance at McD's for taking our surname prefix 'Mc' and turning it into a cheesy signifier for tasteless globalized pap. Thanks guys."

Merriam-Webster, which refuses to cave in to McDonald's demand, is not actually the first dictionary to formally document use of the word, "McJob."

The Independent of London reported in 1997 that the Oxford English Dictionary was advised by its lawyers not to include McJob in its dictionary.

This was around the time of the famous so-called McLibel trial, where McDonald's sued two British activists for distributing pamphlets attacking the fast-food chain for its environmental and employment policies.

The OED ignored its lawyer's advice and added the word.

However, McDonald's Mr. Cantalupo decided to launch his public-relations assault this month after he saw the word "McJob" in the headline of a food industry tabloid, Nation's Restaurant News.

At the same time, Mr. Cantalupo discovered "McJob" was included in the dictionary of the respected American publisher, Merriam-Webster.

So Mr. Cantalupo wrote an "open letter" to Merriam-Webster, which was published in Nation's Restaurant News.

Charging that the definition of McJob as "low-paying work that requires little skill' is "completely inappropriate" and should be withdrawn, Mr. Cantalupo said the term is used just by "assorted academics, pundits and in random news stories."

Jobs at McDonald's, he said, "are all about opportunity for hundreds of thousands of Americans."

Since Mr. Cantalupo launched his broadside, many North American commentators have picked up the debate. Most are criticizing McDonald's for threatening free speech.

"We stand by the accuracy and appropriateness of our definition," said Arthur Bicknell, a spokesman for Merriam-Webster.

"We're constantly taking a look at how the language is being used."

The dictionary, Mr. Bicknell said, is a "glossary of American life or a reflection of language as it's being written."