The question
What is the worst job you have ever had?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.
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.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 January 2023 source ↗
Handing out leaflets for a dry cleaner’s, because no one wanted them and, if people did take them, they just threw them on the floor.
Selling fire alarms at 18 or 19.
Looking after the flowerbed on my windowsill.
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.
To still be working.
Having no purpose.
As a child playing in my parents’ garden in Birmingham, which they still have, and where my daughters play, swinging on my swing that my dad made for me.
A grandfather clock for my partner’s birthday.
When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.
To let things go.
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