Caring too much about what others think.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
People who can’t hear other points of view. Absolute certainty always scares me a little.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 April 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 197 →Lack of empathy.
When they ruin my story because they think theirs is better, so butt in before I’ve finished mine.
Superiority. I shrink when I’m around people who act superior, whether it’s due to authority or intellect. I almost become mute.
More from Douglas Stuart
View profile →My mother and my brother would still be alive. So much of my life has been coping with the grief of losing them.
The summer of 1997. My husband, who is an American, gave up everything to come and live with me in Edinburgh when we were students, and we were so skint but we had so much fun.
My creative freedom. I was the creative director of a large fashion brand when I packed it all in to pursue my writing.
At a fashion show after-party in New York in 2004, my friend dared me to push her into the pool. I did, and you’ve never heard laughter die so quickly.
When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.
To my younger self. I was incredibly self-loathing and self-doubting, and I’m still undoing that damage 30 years later.
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