Children’s underwear department at Marks & Spencer, Oxford Circus. I was 16 years old, earning money in my summer holidays.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 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.
Children’s underwear department at Marks & Spencer, Oxford Circus. I was 16 years old, earning money in my summer holidays.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 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.
Acting, when you don’t want to do it or you disagree with everything, is almost like having sex with someone you don’t like. I had one experience like that on stage, in a terrible version of The Cherry Orchard. I put on a wig, dark-coloured contacts and just hoped no one would recognise me.
I’ve been lucky. When I was a kid, I babysat and was a lifeguard, which I didn’t hate; and then I was a teacher, which I liked.
Handing out leaflets for a dry cleaner’s, because no one wanted them and, if people did take them, they just threw them on the floor.
Impatience and vanity.
Spirit of adventure and kindness.
Professional footballer for Tottenham, or train driver.
We become fertiliser.
Warm and embracing.
Not being a professional footballer.
Louis Theroux, John Simpson, Malcolm Gladwell, Gloria Steinem, Barack Obama, Krishnan Guru-Murthy
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