Shobna Gulati: What is the worst job you have ever had?

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.

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

When I was younger, I signed up to a job agency and thought I would be doing secretarial work, but they assigned me to clean toilets in a factory in Oldham.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 October 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 230 →

Martin Freeman English actor

The Wimpy in Kingston when I was 16. I’d recently become vegetarian, and there weren’t many veggie burgers in 1988.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 January 2019 source ↗

Robert Peston British journalist

Cleaning the freezer room at Bejam as a Saturday job, aged 13.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 June 2018 source ↗

Juliet Stevenson

I worked in a supermarket on the Kings Road when I was 17, standing by the beers, wines and spirits to make sure people didn’t shoplift. They were such horrible employers that I didn’t care whether people shoplifted or not.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 May 2026 source ↗

Frank Cottrell-Boyce British screenwriter, novelist and actor

I spent an advent in my late teens throttling turkeys.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 July 2023 source ↗