# 26 questions to ask your great-grandparent 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. Have the great-grandchild ask the questions, even if you whisper them first. The answers are different when a child asks, and that recording is the one the family will keep.

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: ask once, late, in person)

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com