By Kodie Cherrille (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 11, 2015
Consider the undesirable McJob, which is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a low-paying job that requires little skill and provides little opportunity for advancement.” Such jobs tend to be in the service sector, and are, according to Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, “considered a satisfying career choice by people who never had one.” In our time, the McJob is the lowest common denominator job, the one that no one wants but everyone can get, the job of the unaccomplished life.
We go to university to escape the McJob and the unaccomplished life, leaving behind those we consider not as smart or able or determined. We leave with the hope that we’re going somewhere better, that we’re going to get a career, and that we’re heading towards a more accomplished way of life.
When we think we deserve better than McJobs, we are looking down on a descendant of a way of life that was once considered very legitimate, even if it wasn’t exceptionally financially alluring. Before the chain retail store was the family-owned retail store, and what they might have lacked in terms of products from around the world, they made up for with closer ties to the community. Now chain stores and supermarkets choke out the family-run competition, and give the service sector a bad reputation.
This happens because we think we’re too good for service-sector jobs. While we look for careers that might offer something closer to what we think makes an accomplished life, corporations have their way with the service sector. They sell clothes and food because somebody has to, but they get to sell things their way. And we know well what the multinational corporation can do for the sake of profit: poverty wages for their employees, overseas sweatshop labour, environmental devastation, and self-interested influences in politics to the detriment of the people.
The continual delegitimization of the service sector maintains a vicious circle that strengthens the image of the McJob as something undesirable. This, in turn, makes a way of life in the service sector look terrible. To weaken the chokehold of franchises and to strengthen the internal bonds of a community, the service sector must be made legitimate again — we need to believe that we can live an accomplished life in the service sector. That can be done by looking back to smaller businesses and seeing the place they once had in the community; when compared to chain franchises, we will see the true worth of these places and what it means to work for them.
