EB
When I was a kid I was a chambermaid in my family’s hotel, and I once found a strap-on that someone had left behind.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 February 2021 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.
Others on this question
View all 230 →I lived in Cape Town, and I was spotted on the street and signed up by a modelling agency. I did about three shoots before I realised I hate having my photograph taken and I like food.
Monty Don
English horticulturist, broadcaster, and writer
I once had to dig a fire escape from a basement in a health club. It took two weeks.
David Harewood
British actor and presenter
I was a bailiff for half a morning. I couldn’t stand it.
Lupita Nyong'o
Actress
I waited tables for one night at the turn of the century. They were being fussy about how I put the food on the plates, and I couldn’t have cared less.
More from Edith Bowman
View profile →I had a car crash not long after passing my test, driving mates to a club on a Saturday night. Thankfully, everyone was OK – as was my dad about his car, which was a write-off.
Something that you can’t describe or put in a box. It changes daily and surprises you when you least expect.
As a nice person who always put others before myself. I’d also like my own posthumous tartan.
Martin Scorsese. I was, let’s say, slightly tactile with him during a Q&A; I was more nervous than I’ve been about anything. I kept tapping his knee, it might even have been bruised by the end.
Not having my own chatshow. Yet!
A pair of Balenciaga boots. They were extortionate, but that has to be at least 10 years ago and I still wear them.
More on craft & work
- What accomplishment matters most to you? 192 answers
- How do you tell when a piece of work is done? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively stuck? 63 answers
- How does a new piece of work usually begin for you? 60 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you typically do? 46 answers
- What part of your job would surprise outsiders because it takes up so much of your time? 41 answers
Also answered this
Cressida Cowell, Adrian Edmondson, Louis Theroux, Rosanna Arquette, Robert Carlyle, Tim Rice
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject