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 Andrea Riseborough said elsewhere, not written here
Either shredding duck in a Chinese restaurant, or Oblivion.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 November 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 229 →
When I was younger, I signed up to a job agency and thought I would be doing secretarial work, but they assigned me to clean toilets in a factory in Oldham.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 October 2025 source ↗
A lot of awful gigs. You can’t become a successful comedian without dying on your arse more times than you can remember.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 November 2025 source ↗
I worked in a Helms Bakery assembly line that separated egg whites from the yolks and from time to time a box of rotten eggs would come through. Need I say more?
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 October 2023 source ↗
Magician’s assistant on a cruise ship for two weeks when I was 19. When I was meant to be being levitated, I was silently crying while pretending to be unconscious as I hung limply off a metal pole. It was bleak.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 December 2025 source ↗

More from Andrea Riseborough

View profile →

More on craft & work

Also answered this

Jessica Brown Findlay, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Elaine Paige, Martin Sheen, Ann Dowd, Jenna Coleman

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer