I worked on a kibbutz in Israel and had to clean out the chicken run. It was like an oven. Inside were rows and rows of chickens that had been shitting for months – the whole floor was six inches deep in chicken shit.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
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.
I worked in a TGI Fridays when I was 19 and came to London for the first time. It was absolutely horrible and I got fired after two weeks.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 April 2018 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 232 →I’ve done some acting jobs where everybody’s gone out of their way to make sure that you feel annoying and easily replaceable.
Helen George
English actress
Waitressing. I was so bad. I smashed things. I once mistakenly ordered a very expensive bottle of wine for a table. They thought they were ordering a very average bottle of wine, and I ordered them an £800 bottle and they drank it. I got the sack a few weeks later.
Karamo Brown
American television host, personality and actor
Selling newspapers outside the grocery store for two years.
More from Stephen Graham
View profile →Liverpool losing the FA Cup final to Wimbledon when I was a kid. It made me cry.
I was knocked over by a taxi in Liverpool when I was seven. And I fell off the seventh storey of a car park when I was 10 and broke both legs, my collarbone and my arm.
My wife, Hannah. She’s amazing and keeps me in check. I met her 24 years ago at drama school.
Warm contentment, and like nothing else exists.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 193 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 70 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 69 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 69 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 51 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 47 answers
Also answered this
Craig Revel Horwood, Charles Dance, Martin Clunes, Daryl McCormack, Noel Clarke, Jessica Raine
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject