Skip to content

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.

ER
Esther Rantzen
Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 February 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 230 →
Jack Dee
When I was a kid I had a Saturday job in the stockroom of a supermarket. I remember everything in there being a little bit grubby and slightly sticky. We’d do things like play rugby with a swiss roll. I think of it every time I go shopping.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 November 2024 source ↗
Douglas Stuart Scottish fashion designer and novelist
When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 April 2023 source ↗

More from Esther Rantzen

View profile →
Question If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change? Failure & regret
Maybe I should have agreed to take the job of controller of BBC One when Bill Cotton offered it to me. I do feel a wimp; I would have been the first woman in the job.What do you consider your greatest achievement? I don’t really claim credit, I hope, for helping to launch Childline and the Silver Line and Silver Stories. It is an achievement that they all exist, but that is down to their amazing teams.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 February 2024 source ↗

More on craft & work

Also answered this

Sheryl Crow, Peter Capaldi, Arlene Phillips, Tom Ellis, Shappi Khorsandi, Rachel Whiteread

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer