Gulliver’s Travels at Adelaide Fringe.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 August 2023 source ↗
craft
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.
On the record
Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.
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In their thirties 14
In their forties 8
In their fifties 14
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Seventy and beyond 9
Bar and buffet at Top Ten Bingo in Greenford. A lot of the old people were quite bigoted.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 September 2023 source ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 worked in a chicken factory in the Netherlands when I was 16.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 November 2023 source ↗
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 ↗
I didn’t enjoy a bar job and glass collecting – people could be really rude.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 December 2023 source ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
Working as a waitress in a cocktail bar in Shoreditch, London.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 February 2024 source ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
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 ↗
I’ve done some acting jobs where everybody’s gone out of their way to make sure that you feel annoying and easily replaceable.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 September 2024 source ↗
I worked in a paper factory at five o’clock on a Saturday morning when I was in my early 20s. I’d go out raving the night before, get an hour’s sleep and then go to the factory. I was covered in paper cuts and used to think I heard people talking to me; they gave me a lot of breaks because they thought I was going mad.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 October 2024 source ↗
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 ↗
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