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.
Collecting glasses in a Lancashire pub. Try to take a pint glass with a millimetre of foam still in it, and you get a lit cigarette on the back of your hand.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 May 2019 source ↗
Six weeks in my dad’s office doing admin was enough to persuade me to pursue a career in sport.
I was a secret shopper and had to do a lot of bookies – Coral and William Hill – all around London. For 18-year-old me looking all fab it was quite scary going in and saying: “Hiya, can I put £4 on No 7 horse, please?” But you got to keep the money when you won.
The worst was as a butcher, aged 17.
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.
Phoning my dad to tell him we’d won the Edinburgh Perrier award with The League Of Gentlemen in 1997.
Tears Of Laughter by Cheese and Crackers. We wrote it for an episode of Inside No 9 and it ends “Laughter is my memory of you...”
Nothing – haven’t you heard of the butterfly effect? I could find myself still collecting glasses in Charnock Richard while Donald Sutherland would be enjoying my life.
What I am now, but with a better singing voice.
Alison Steadman, Dominic Cooper, Jack Whitehall, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Daryl McCormack, Chiwetel Ejiofor
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