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 ↗
Cleaning men’s toilets in the Swan hotel in the Cotswolds.
I was the PE technician at my old secondary school, so I had to pump up all the balls, wash all the kits and get the form notes in before morning registration every day.
I was a waiter with my old friend Justin Clayton; we would sneak in too many drinks and were fired after spilling soup too many times on customers.
Reading the news. It’s a dull job.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
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.
I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
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.”
Adam Kay, Jack Whitehall, Ann Patchett, Paterson Joseph, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Jo Nesbø
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