Cockroach stamper at a dried-flower factory.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
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When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
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What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
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.
Cleaning toilets in a hotel in Croydon when I was 16. A guest once gave me a half-eaten bag of pistachios as a tip, so there were perks.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 October 2018 source ↗
Others on this question
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Hayley Squires
English actress and playwright
I worked in a call centre. I would go clubbing on a Saturday with my brother and my mates, get home for five or six in the morning, and then have to be at work at 8am.
In South Africa I washed cars, I danced in parking lots and shopping malls, and was a children’s entertainer.
Bar and buffet at Top Ten Bingo in Greenford. A lot of the old people were quite bigoted.
More from Sue Perkins
View profile →Not accepting every dare.
In my 20s, touring small arts centres with my best mate, performing sketch comedy to a handful of people.
Anna dared me to jump off a cliff in Menorca on holiday a couple of years ago. I did. I fell 30m through the air, hit the water at an odd angle and shattered my coccyx.
An eye surgeon. I had an operation on my cornea when I was little, and remember being deeply enamoured with the team who looked after me. Subsequently, I was very disappointed to learn that a degree of scientific aptitude was required for the job, which ruled me out.
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