Selfishness—people who don’t care about others or their feelings and will do or say anything as long as they get what they want.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
197 answers answered between 1974 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
On the record
Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.
People who speak with heavy American accents. I can barely understand them. No, seriously, dishonesty.
Greed and stupidity.
Unnecessary judgment.
Judgmental without investigation.
Picking their nose and eating it.
Lack of understanding and tolerance.
People who judge other people's actions on their own thought process.
Rudeness and racism.
Freeloaders with a sense of entitlement.
To be dishonest. Sometimes people have to be dishonest in order not to hurt, but if someone is basically dishonest, that is a different matter.
Actually, I dislike dealing with schedules and logistics—mine and others’.
Vindictiveness and spite.
Serially telling endless boring jokes and sexism and racism and homophobia (they often go together).
Passive aggression.
People who are proud of their ignorance.
No sense of humor.
The inability to stop talking about themselves when they’re not being interviewed.
Complacent stupidity.
Dishonesty and being late for appointments.
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