Fairly or not, the prospects (for want of a better word) of "a job at McDonalds" is a threat oft-used by parents, teachers and other authoritarian figures to get their kids to work hard at school and learn something other than dirty sports songs and push-penny. Generally taken to mean a lowly, ill-paid, career-non-progressive, insulting job that really would be a hideous pain to have to turn up to each day, the highly respected Oxford English Dictionary has for several years defined the phrase "McJob" in the following manner:

McJob: an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.

McDonalds aren't impressed.

Having recently started a campaign promoting all those wonderful "McOpportunities" (their words) to attract "management trainees", their next step is to attempt to re-write the dictionaries. Yes, they have perhaps rewritten a vast, vast number of people's ideas of what is acceptable as a meal but here they seem to be struggling.

A spokesman for the Golden Arches - who clearly sacrificed an education in what a dictionary does to fulfil his own personal glorious McOpportunity - entirely misses the point by stating:

Dictionaries are supposed to be paragons of accuracy. And it this case, they got it completely wrong...It's a complete disservice and incredibly demeaning to a terrific work force and a company that's been a jobs and opportunity machine for 50 years.

Erm...firstly the Poorhouse has never noticed a vast consensus building up with waves of angry citizens protesting how wonderful jobs at McDonalds actually are. Secondly, even if that was the case, a dictionary is supposed to explain various meanings of words - i.e. how they are used in common-day speech. Even if McJobs were revered gold-dust, if the phrase is still commonly used in such a negative way, it'll have to stay in.

They've already failed to get another dictionary, the Merriam-Webster to remove the phrase ("a low-paying job that required little skill and provides little opportunity of advancement") which doesn't bode well for them - but does bode well for the rest of humanity. Whether or not they've noticed that the prefix "Mc" actually has its own entry in both the mentioned dictionaries, essentially denoting a word-starter than insults any given noun put after it, is unknown. McBothered.

(Fake) News just in: The Poorhouse launches a campaign to remove "Poorhouse" from the dictionary. The Merriam-Webster definition currently reads: "a place maintained at public expense to house needy or dependent persons". Needy? Dependent?? Moi!?!?