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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.

One of 24 questions in The Q&A here.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Arts and letters 55 Politics and public life 4 Business and finance 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 14 In their forties 8 In their fifties 14 In their sixties 14 Seventy and beyond 9
Barack Obama 44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008
Scooping ice cream is tougher than it looks. … Rows and rows of rock-hard ice cream can be brutal on the wrists. … I was less interested in what the job meant for my future and more concerned about what it meant for my jump shot.

Recorded LinkedIn, 'Here's the Scoop: Why My First Job Mattered', The Associated Press, 25 February 2016 source ↗

Keir Starmer
Leader of the opposition. I worked with the police service in Northern Ireland and then ran the Crown Prosecution Service. In each of those jobs, if something needed fixing, I could fix it. As leader of the opposition, you are not in power and it’s the most frustrating job I’ve ever had, and a job I hope I don’t have for much longer.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗

Róisín Murphy
When I was a teenager, I worked in a vegetable shop on Saturdays, and the guy had a rotation of 10 pretty teenagers working for him and was really sleazy. I only went twice because the second time he made me go up to his flat above the shop and clean his toilet, and he was watching me.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 September 2023 source ↗

Corinne Bailey Rae
I worked in a cafe, which I loved, but when it was quiet we had to scrape the fat out from between the tiles on the floor with a butter knife.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 September 2023 source ↗

PP Arnold
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 ↗

Neil Gaiman Author of fiction, comics and screenplays
The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 October 2023 source ↗

Dervla Kirwan
About five years ago, I was in a play that was an unmitigated disaster. I had to rally the troops and go out every night.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 October 2023 source ↗

Denise Welch
I was a waitress at a holiday camp. On a Wednesday afternoon all the guys used to pee into the rice pudding and we had to serve it to the customers.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 December 2023 source ↗

Leona Lewis
I quite enjoyed all my retail jobs (I worked in H&M and Gap), but the worst times were the sale periods. The summer sales – awful.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 December 2023 source ↗

Kate Humble
I lived in Cape Town, and I was spotted on the street and signed up by a modelling agency. I did about three shoots before I realised I hate having my photograph taken and I like food.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 December 2023 source ↗

Esther Rantzen
When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 February 2024 source ↗

Peter Sarsgaard
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.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 February 2024 source ↗

Jack Davenport
Bicycle courier: it was literally dicing with death on a minute-to-minute basis for 12 hours a day. It was terrifying and exhausting.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 March 2024 source ↗

Caroline Lucas
A holiday job as a chambermaid at the Scratchwood Travelodge on the M1. The state some people leave their rooms in was a revelation.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 April 2024 source ↗

Michelle Collins
Working in McDonald’s when I was 16. It was about 90p an hour. Because I was always late, they made me “trash walk” the length of Kentish Town high street and pick up the McDonald’s rubbish.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 April 2024 source ↗

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