After the Merriam-Websters McJobs flurry (not to be confused with a McFlurry) of a week ago seems to be dying down, I got a trackback from the Swedish site that broke the news, Blind Höna.
Alas, neither I nor Babelfish speak Swedish, so I’m not sure what it’s saying, except to note the various people who linked back to him. There is, though, a link to an interesting article at the Register on the matter, where M-W notes it’s just a coincidence that the reference to “McJob” in the sampler of new words disappeared just about the time McDonald’s pitched a fit about it.
One side light was McDonald’s complaining that it was actually a trademarked term, related to its McJOBS program.
A spokesman told AP that McJOBS™ is a registered trade mark. Indeed it is, and one with an interesting history. McDonald’s first registered the term on May 16 1984, as a name and image for “training handicapped persons as restaurant employees”. But the trademarked lapsed in February 1992, and was declared ‘Dead’ by the United States Patent Office. Following the publication of Douglas Coupland’s smash Generation X in paperback edition in October 1992 (the book first appeared in 1991), which popularized the term, McDonald’s restored the trademark.
“If there’s a trademarks issue it’s with the plural, not McJob,” [M-W rep] Bicknell told us.
And a check back at the earlier BH site presents this further comment from M-W:
As for the missing ‘McJob’ on the New Words Sampler, we felt as though there was enough misinformation and incomplete information circulating that it would be best to let the full entry and not the shorter excerpt speak for itself. We also found prior to the ‘McJob’ incident that many people were confusing the content of the ‘New Word Sampler’ with the full content of the Eleventh Edition of the Collegiate Dictionary. Accordingly, it is currently under revision; a new version will be restored soon online. “McJob” remains in all the manifestations of the Eleventh (CD-ROM, print, and online).
And that’s the rest of the McStory.