Caddying for really rich people at this country club in Connecticut when I was a teenager. They would talk like I wasn’t there so I would hear all about their lives, their affairs and their stupidity, and yet I couldn’t say anything.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
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.
Cleaning toilets in a hotel in Croydon when I was 16. A guest once gave me a half-eaten bag of pistachios as a tip, so there were perks.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 October 2018 source ↗
Others on this question
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Jo Nesbø
Norwegian writer and musician
I worked on a trawler and I was seasick the whole time.
Bar and buffet at Top Ten Bingo in Greenford. A lot of the old people were quite bigoted.
Leafleting for a window company when I was 12. I remember putting them through letterboxes thinking: I’m going to sell drugs, because this is rubbish.
More from Sue Perkins
View profile →In my 20s, touring small arts centres with my best mate, performing sketch comedy to a handful of people.
Not accepting every dare.
Anna dared me to jump off a cliff in Menorca on holiday a couple of years ago. I did. I fell 30m through the air, hit the water at an odd angle and shattered my coccyx.
An eye surgeon. I had an operation on my cornea when I was little, and remember being deeply enamoured with the team who looked after me. Subsequently, I was very disappointed to learn that a degree of scientific aptitude was required for the job, which ruled me out.
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