Features

ALL MCWORK AND LOW PAY?

WHEN PEOPLE HEAR that I’ve volunteered to work for a day in McDonald’s, they react with a mixture of bafflement and horror. And who can blame them? In the popular imagination at least, the fast-food multinational has been blamed for everything from rising obesity rates, to Third World exploitation, to Morgan Spurlock’s diminished sex drive.

Even the Oxford English Dictionary is taking potshots at the company these days. It defines a “McJob” as an “unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects”, while, bizarrely, McDonald’s itself runs television ads that depict its employees being routinely ridiculed by their peers. As career moves go, then, the Golden Arches is hardly considered a golden ticket. Read the rest of this entry »