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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
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 ↗

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 ↗

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 ↗

Jack Dee
When I was a kid I had a Saturday job in the stockroom of a supermarket. I remember everything in there being a little bit grubby and slightly sticky. We’d do things like play rugby with a swiss roll. I think of it every time I go shopping.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 November 2024 source ↗

Jared Harris
I worked on a kibbutz in Israel and had to clean out the chicken run. It was like an oven. Inside were rows and rows of chickens that had been shitting for months – the whole floor was six inches deep in chicken shit.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 February 2025 source ↗

Juliet Stevenson
I worked in a supermarket on the Kings Road when I was 17, standing by the beers, wines and spirits to make sure people didn’t shoplift. They were such horrible employers that I didn’t care whether people shoplifted or not.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 May 2026 source ↗

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