As a former waitress myself, I can attest that one customer can be enough to ruin the staff’s day, and they have hundreds of ways to do it. Obnoxious and entitled ones make it their life’s mission to see how much waiters can take before blowing up—be it cursing, yelling, or crying— ignorant ones force the employees to stay late, whether because the customers themselves stay long after the closing hours or because of the mess they make that has to be taken care of, and rude ones make the employees lose faith in humanity one order at a time. Long story short, the possibilities are nearly endless.

Having to deal with aggravating people might be one of the reasons why bartenders and waiters reportedly have low satisfaction in regards to what they do. Data shows that in general, more than a third of employees in the US—35%, to be exact—are not satisfied with their jobs, and only 20% are passionate about theirs.

CareerExplorer delved deeper into how (un)satisfied servers are with their jobs, and, according to their survey, the situation is so bad, food servers fall into the bottom 3% of career choices in regards to happiness.

Using star ratings—with one being the worst and 5 the best—the waiters were asked to evaluate five different aspects of their jobs: whether or not they were happy with their salary, whether or not they found their job meaningful, how well they thought their personality fit the job, how much they enjoyed their work environment, and how well they could put their abilities to use at work.

In regards to the first of the five points—being happy with the salary—only 6% of food servers gave such a statement a 5-star rating, meaning that only a few believe they earn well in the position. (The overall score was 2.6 stars out of 5, with roughly a quarter of the surveyees choosing only 1 star, which means they’re not content with the remuneration, and equally as many choosing to rate their salary with 3 stars, meaning they’re neither content nor discontent.)

Even fewer servers—1.8/5—were reportedly happy with the meaningfulness of their profession. However, the majority of them believed their personalities fit well with what they did for a living.

The evaluations of the other two out of five aspects of being a food server—how much they enjoy their work environment and how well they can put their abilities to use there—revealed that three-out-of-five people do like the setting they earn their daily bread in; fewer—two-out-of-five—feel their skills are properly utilized there.

Data USA revealed that, back in 2021, there were roughly two million people working as servers in the country, earning an average of $18,961 a year (roughly $40,000 less than the average national salary of $59,596).

Anyone who’s ever given the profession a go knows that a large part of a server’s income comes from tips (which might be the reason they are willing to put up with the annoying ways of some customers). But even despite their willingness to tip, quite a few customers don’t feel fond of the system where the livelihood of servers depends on the tips they leave.

According to Bankrate, two thirds of adults in the US have a negative view of tipping, the main reason for that being the belief that businesses should pay their employees better rather than have them rely on tips. Other things that annoy customers about tipping include pre-entered tip screens, tipping culture getting out of control, and the confusion about who and how much to tip.

Whether they do or don’t like the system, people seem to tip their wait staff nevertheless; but fewer of them every year do. In 2019, roughly 77% of Americans at restaurants would always tip their servers, compared to 75% in 2021, 73% in 2022, and 65% recently in 2023, Bankrate reports.

“Inflation and general economic unease seem to be making Americans stingier with their tipping habits, yet we’re confronted with more invitations to tip than ever,” Bankrate senior industry analyst Ted Rossman pointed out. “It’s a fascinating issue with few clear answers. There is one apparent certainty, though: Tipping doesn’t seem likely to leave American society anytime soon.”

Bankrate also revealed that people’s tipping habits were influenced by the pandemic; its 2023 survey found that roughly 14% of Americans started to tip more since then, while 9% did the opposite since the unsettling times.

Needless to say, for the wait staff themselves, the pandemic was far from the happiest moment in their professional lives. With the world coming to a halt and eateries all over the world shutting their doors—some temporarily, some, sadly, for good—they had to find a way to survive not only without tips, but without a job in general.

In the beginning of the lockdown, in 2020, over eight million restaurant employees were laid off or furloughed, Forbes reports. In 2021, hundreds of thousands people in the hospitality and the restaurant industries decided to put in their notices themselves, be it because of Covid-related concerns or other reasons.

Unfortunately, the worker shortage didn’t end in 2021; a year later, in 2022, more than 80% of restaurant operators were short in at least one position. To make matters worse, as much as one-third of restaurants lacked people in not only the server but the dishwasher positions, too.

With restaurants up and running again, servers, too, are back at their jobs. And it’s no surprise that the level to which they—as well as representatives of other professions, for that matter—love or hate their places of employment often depends on the people they’re forced to deal with.

Unfortunately for the servers behind the pictures on this list, they had to bear with some quite troublesome individuals. However, coming back to my first thought, the same way an aggravating customer can ruin one’s day, a nice one has the power to fix it; so, in order to even out the scale, consider this a gentle reminder to be polite to your waiter next time you’re at a restaurant.