Gavin Rossdale: 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.

Recorded Gavin Rossdale said elsewhere, not written here

Painting 11 identical dentists’ offices magnolia. It was Kafkaesque. By the time you are in office four, you are losing your mind.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 July 2020 source ↗

Others on this question

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Karamo Brown American television host, personality and actor

Selling newspapers outside the grocery store for two years.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 September 2021 source ↗

Harlan Coben American author

I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗

Sally Lindsay

Cold call market research at uni.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 August 2025 source ↗

Tim Rice English lyricist and author

I worked in a petrol station on the A1 one summer. I enjoyed it except when I was on latrine duty.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 March 2017 source ↗