craft
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.
Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
When I worked at a dog food company shovelling the exterminated rats.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2025 source ↗
Double-glazing sales when I was about 16 – on the phone, cold calling. Horrendous.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 July 2025 source ↗
Cold call market research at uni.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 August 2025 source ↗
I was a guard on the Orient Express – however, only when it was stationed at a railway siding in Vauxhall.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 September 2025 source ↗
Clearing up someone’s sick – it was on police duty.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 September 2025 source ↗
When I was younger, I signed up to a job agency and thought I would be doing secretarial work, but they assigned me to clean toilets in a factory in Oldham.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 October 2025 source ↗
Magician’s assistant on a cruise ship for two weeks when I was 19. When I was meant to be being levitated, I was silently crying while pretending to be unconscious as I hung limply off a metal pole. It was bleak.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 December 2025 source ↗
I’ve enjoyed every single job, including working at my dad’s chicken shop selling potato gems (fried potato circles) to the surfer dudes.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 July 2026 source ↗
Nobody has answered this one yet.