RT
Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
The question
What is the worst job you have ever had?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.
Others on this question
View all 230 →I don’t think I’ve ever done a job that I hate. I worked as a temp briefly when I was out of work and it was fun.
Terence Conran
British restaurateur and designer
When I was 19, I washed up in the basement of a Paris restaurant that stank of rotted food. I did it for six months, until I was promoted to vegetable boy.
Ralf Little
English actor, writer, former semi-professional footballer
For two weeks I worked behind the players’ bar at Bolton Wanderers football club – footballers don’t tip.
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.
More from Rose Tremain
View profile →The only drink I really, really like is champagne.
The film of Restoration. A beautiful cast. An award-winning designer. A massive budget. A dog’s dinner.
Meryl Streep. For all her truthful and perfected offerings that have taken me to an “elsewhere”, in which my mind could feel both soothed and stimulated.
We live in a fearful age: Brexit, Covid, global warming, cancel culture, war in Ukraine. Add in pancreatic cancer and you find me in an advanced and complex state of anxiety.
Like coming home.
Talking in cliches. We have the most economic, resonant and versatile language in the world, yet so many people use it in a dull and boring way.
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