Questions to ask your grandparents

26 questions to ask your grandparents about their work

Work is the chapter families know least about. These questions treat work as craft: the tools, the shifts, the boss, the pride and the grievance. Ask each one "how did you meet?" separately first. Then together. The differences are the best part.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question. The 1 marked tender come last: ask them once, late, in person, with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question.

1. What did your father do for work, and what did you understand about it as a child?
2. What was the first thing you ever earned money for?
3. What did you want to be when you grew up, and when did that change?
4. What did you do with your first real paycheck?
5. Walk me through a working day. What time did it start, what were the tools, who was the boss?Work as craft: the particulars nobody records.
6. What were you good at that nobody noticed?
7. What was the proudest moment of your working life? And the worst day?
8. Did you ever quit something, or get fired? What did you tell people?
9. Who taught you the most about how to work?
10. What did money mean in your house? Who held it, and what did "we can't afford it" sound like?
11. What is the strangest job you ever had?
12. When did you leave school, and whose decision was it?The leaving date explains the next twenty years.
13. What did your first wage packet hold, and how much of it did you hand over at home?The split between the wage and the housekeeping is the whole family economy in one number.
14. What did you do for extra money when things were tight: a second job, a sideline, something off the books?The sideline is where the ingenuity lives.
15. Did you grow up around working animals: horses, cows, hens, pigeons? Who looked after them?Working animals mean a working childhood, and that is a different book.
16. Who did you make friends with at work that you kept long after the work was over?
17. What was your weekly wage in the 1960s, and what did a night out take out of it?Wage against night out is a ratio the reader understands instantly.
18. Where were you working in 1975, and what did the place look like on a Monday morning?A Monday morning scene is the honest version of a career.
19. What is the one thing you would tell a young person starting work tomorrow?
20. What did you wear to work, and what state was it in by the end of the day?The state of the clothes at six o'clock is the job.
21. What did you make, fix, sell or look after that is still out there somewhere?Work that outlasts the worker is the chapter the family never thought to ask for.
22. Who was the worst boss you ever had, and what did you say about them at home?
23. What were you paid when you started, and what were you getting when you finished?Two numbers, forty years apart, are a career in a sentence.
24. How did you get the job? Who put in a word, and what did you say at the interview?Who put in a word is how the world actually worked.
25. What was the one task at work you could do with your eyes shut? Walk me through it.
26. Did you ever lie to get a job, a house or a person? What was the lie?tender

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 11 of the things a writer needs about your grandparents: where they came from, habits, routines and work, wants, fears and wounds, how others saw them, the story that shows them, contradictions, key relationships, beliefs and values, their place in history, how they look and move, objects, places, food, music.

More questions to ask your grandparents

• All questions to ask your grandparents
• Questions to ask your grandparents about their childhood
• Questions to ask your grandparents about family history
• Questions to ask your grandparents about love and marriage
• Questions to ask your grandparents about the war
• Questions to ask your grandparents about faith and beliefs
• Questions to ask your grandparents about food and the kitchen table
• Questions to ask your grandparents that are funny
• Questions to ask your grandparents about hard times

Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.