Rose Tremain: What is the worst job you have done?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Rose Tremain said elsewhere, not written here

Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗

Others on this question

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Harlan Coben American author

I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗

Alison Steadman British actress

Washing dishes when I was a student.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 January 2009 source ↗

Rita Wilson American actress, singer, and producer

I was a ticket taker at the Universal Amphitheatre, an outdoor music venue. I saw everybody – Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, the Eagles, Elton. But, after that, we had to clean the women’s restrooms and that was horrible. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of vomiting, a lot of very messy bathrooms.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 April 2023 source ↗

Adjoa Andoh English actress

Cleaning men’s toilets in the Swan hotel in the Cotswolds.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 September 2021 source ↗