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.
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.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗
I left the army and got a job with Unilever in Northern Ireland. They were very strict and you had to have a hat, and when you went into a shop you had to raise your hat to the shopkeeper and then sell your wares. I was selling margarine.
Working in an abattoir.
I’ve always enjoyed all my jobs, whether it was cleaning the stairs for my piano teacher or working at Lister hospital one summer.
Secretary to a lawyer. I was sacked after a week.
With a wistful smile.
We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.
A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.
I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”
I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
Neil Gaiman, Hayley Squires, Meera Syal, Anne Enright, Judith Kerr, Ralf Little
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