A holiday job as a chambermaid at the Scratchwood Travelodge on the M1. The state some people leave their rooms in was a revelation.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
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 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?
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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Meera Syal
British writer and actress
Having to clean out my daughter’s digs at university. The memory of the state of that toilet still lives with me.
Brendan Gleeson
Irish actor and director
Fixing a municipal sewer pipe.
Craig Charles
English actor
Filming a TV show in a field in the snow in February in the Dublin hills for 14 hours; the director said, “We’re not going to get that shot today.”
More from PP Arnold
View profile →My father was a very macho, controlling man and we clashed a lot. He told me that I would never be able to keep a husband with my attitude. He was right! I’ve had two short, unsuccessful marriages.
Escaping an abusive teen marriage and being blessed with the opportunity to create a new life for myself and my two young children in London at the height of the swinging 60s.
It has been in myself, for allowing individuals who I relied on to make important decisions in my life that left me alone to pick up the pieces.
Loving, sincere, honest.
At this time in my life, I quite like myself but, for a large portion of my life, I deplored being shy.
To live your best life every day, because tomorrow isn’t promised.
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