March 20th 2007 06:42 pm
McDonald’s and misleading statistics
From BBC News:
The UK arm of McDonald’s is planning a campaign to have the dictionary definition of a McJob changed.
The Oxford English Dictionary says it is: “An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.”
It’s not surprising that McDonald’s would want to do this, nor would this be in anyway newsworthy without the closing paragraph in the short article:
McDonald’s tried to improve the image of its employment opportunities last year with the slogan: “McProspects - over half of our executive team started in our restaurants. Not bad for a McJob.”
That bit, though, is bad logic and mis-applied statistics. It’s reminiscent of the idea, and rationalization of said idea, that marijuana is a gateway drug. I don’t exactly remember the number, but the idea went like this: marijuana users are $PERCENT more likely than non-users to try $HARDER-DRUG, which I remember as being heroin, but a site claims cocaine.
Is it terribly surprising to anyone that some people already engaged in an illegal behavior will move along and try another illegal behavior in a similar class? Really? Note how numbers of marijuana users who don’t try anything else aren’t published in this report, and, likewise, how many employees who work at McDonald’s do not end up in the “executive team.”
Having never used illegal drugs, nor been a part of drug culture, I can’t make the following claim, but fast food restaurants have a workforce with a high turnover, and there are few jobs available in management and beyond. Pretending otherwise with obfuscatory statistics is disingenuous. Or more simply put: To state differently with misleading statistics is purposely, well, misleading.
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