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.
Picking up RAF pilots’ parachute packs and gear they dropped off in a pile.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 June 2026 source ↗
When I was 17, I worked in a warehouse in Rotherham doing an audit of truck parts. I counted nuts and bolts all day long.
Christmas elf at the Rainforest Cafe.
Telesales. I refused to wear a tie, but my argument that “They can’t see what we’re wearing” didn’t wash with the manager and I lasted a week.
Cleaning toilets at McDonald’s when I was 16.
As a nice old man.
Trying to exercise authority over one.
Being able to paint the way I do.
The boozing. I started on rum as a child.
In 2001, when my eldest son died.
A detective. Or a writer. Or a poet.
Paul Whitehouse, Michael Flatley, Carol Vorderman, Martin Sheen, Andy Serkis, Simone Biles
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