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.
Waitressing. I was so bad. I smashed things. I once mistakenly ordered a very expensive bottle of wine for a table. They thought they were ordering a very average bottle of wine, and I ordered them an £800 bottle and they drank it. I got the sack a few weeks later.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 January 2023 source ↗
Cleaning around the feet of John Malkovich with industrial carpet cleaner while he was trying to learn lines in the foyer of a theatre.
Handing out leaflets for a European coach trip wearing just lederhosen, in February and March in Surrey. It was freezing, and I got fired.
Life modelling for a woman who made me recite Shakespeare as I posed. I had a hangover, and it was all a bit much.
Living in a campervan for a week with Timmy Mallett for a children’s TV show about 40 years ago.
Going through a divorce.
When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.
A grandfather clock for my partner’s birthday.
To let things go.
Having no purpose.
As a child playing in my parents’ garden in Birmingham, which they still have, and where my daughters play, swinging on my swing that my dad made for me.
Andy Serkis, Omid Djalili, James Norton, Archie Panjabi, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Julian Sands
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