When I worked at a dog food company shovelling the exterminated rats.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?
Money & investment
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
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 was a reporter for many years at the Washington Post. Although I loved every minute, I don’t think I was a very good reporter.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 April 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
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Francesca Martinez
British comedian
I’ve liked all my jobs, amazingly.
Melanie Chisholm
British pop singer
Working in a chip shop when I was 16. I gave my friends massive portions, but the smell was gross.
Looking after the flowerbed on my windowsill.
More from Malcolm Gladwell
View profile →As a writer who took cheering up his listeners seriously.
Probably a piece of music. I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno called Another Green World, which is one of his early ‘70s, it’s ambient music, but not the kind of really weird ambient music. There’s an adage that says the music you discover when you are 18, I think it’s 18 is the magic year, is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life. ... Well, I discovered that when I was 18. And I sing the songs of that album in my head all of the time. And I worship Brian Eno.
I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.
Kiss And Say Goodbye by the Manhattans.
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