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?
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
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.
Standing outside a pub in Acton on a freezing February day in a threadbare overcoat doing market research.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 March 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 232 →
Robert Peston
British journalist
Cleaning the freezer room at Bejam as a Saturday job, aged 13.
Gloria Steinem
Writer and feminist organiser
Being a salesgirl in a baby shop where the others said things like, “He’s Jewish, but she’s American.” Also, after college, being a waitress in London, and trying to make change in the old money of shillings and pence.
Adjoa Andoh
English actress
Cleaning men’s toilets in the Swan hotel in the Cotswolds.
More from Charles Collingwood
View profile →My childhood. I was an only child, happy and secure, and there was always plenty of time to play cricket.
Watching the Festival of Remembrance last autumn.
Not listening to me.
My beautiful silver Jaguar XKR soft-top.
In an audition at the Royal Court, this man called out, “Were you trained?”
My first wife – we were too young.
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