Jerkass / Hell's Kitchen

There are many, many Jerkasses on this show. What also doesn't help is that the good majority of the Jerkasses are the ones who can cook well, but are horrible with getting along with the team, prolonging their stay in Hell's Kitchen.

Staff

• Gordon Ramsay himself tends to be this when a lot of things go wrong, verbally abusing and insulting the contestants (such as calling them names like donkey, donut, bitch, or cow) when they are not performing to his expectations. That's right, he can be downright nasty sometimes.
• Sous Chef Scott had a Hair-Trigger Temper and could be ruthless to the contestants if they made him mad, as Season 7's Benjamin and Season 9's Monterray found out the hard way. He also has incredibly thin skin despite being extremely aggressive with contestants, best shown whenever the black jackets take control of the kitchen and call-out his sabotages. He's also not above threatening women for getting on his nerves. He even threatened Dave of all people, a man with one functional hand.

Season 1

• Jeff was argumentative with everybody, quickly alienating the Red Team, to the point they were glad when he quit the competition in the middle of the third service.

Season 2

• Sara was very manipulative and tried to sabotage her teammates on multiple occasions. Her bullying behaviour towards Virginia cemented her status as this trope.
• Tom constantly served sub-par food, spoke back to Gordon, and generally acted like a baby.

Season 3

• These three ladies are the reason why Ramsay dubbed Red Team "Hell's Bitches".
  • Tiffany was nothing but a bully towards Julia because of her background — she infamously stated that Julia "works in a fucking Waffle House" — despite Julia having done nothing wrong to her at all.
  • Joanna also joined in on the bullying because it would "Make Julia look bad" and her intro quote states that she would lie, cheat and manipulate to get to the top.
  • Melissa started out as the sane one, having chosen Tiffany to be eliminated, but halfway into the season, she went loopy and became abrasive towards the Red Team.

Season 4

• Jason was a very sexist jerk who would keep claiming that men were better than women, despite ironically being the worst chef of the season.
• Ben would never actually take any sort of responsibility for his actions, instead blaming his shortcomings on either "different techniques" or his teammates. It's a miracle that he was still enough of a Graceful Loser when he was eliminated over Petrozza despite the latter having the most nominations for elimination.
• Jen may have started out as tolerable early in the season, but eventually, she became very manipulative and a backstabber, sabotaging others to get her victories. It came to a head when she attempted to rig the votes for elimination after the third Black Jacket service.

Season 5

• Lacey was whiny, lazy, and had constantly given up on her team—whichever one she was on—to the point of completely skipping the second challenge’s punishment to lie in bed and cry the entire time. Yet somehow, she frequently had the audacity to chastise everyone else for hating her, including giving Ben attitude when he was simply trying to help her.

Season 6

• Joseph was so bad that he was suspected to be a plant, though one thinks that if that was the case, he would have hung around for several episodes instead of blowing his stack and getting kicked off at the end of the second episode/beginning of the third episode for trying to pick a fight with Chef Ramsay and being disrespectful to him.
• Suzanne was lazy, overconfident in her abilities and constantly made excuses for her terrible performance.

Season 7

• Benjamin certainly had his moments in Season 7, especially when he's acting smug and talking during the confession cams about certain chefs not having the skills needed to be a head chef, that they have no passion for cooking etc. which can get annoying after a while. Unlike Jen from Season 4, however, when he returned during the All-Stars season, he mellowed out and was less smug.
• Scott had horrible ego problems, where every other sentence that came out of his mouth was about how great a chef he is and how the Blue/Red Team would "die" without him, despite being one of the worst chefs of the season. This resulted in him being a very Smug Snake who looked down on all of the other chefs, and even tried to manipulate Fran into not nominating him (Ramsay called him forward anyway).

Season 8

• Sabrina tried to get teammate Nona eliminated in the first episode because she snores (and because she made fried chicken, which Sabrina felt did not count as a good dish).
• Russell was just as bad, if not worse. He was probably the most talented chef in the competition, but by the final dinner service everyone despised him so much that Nona's brigade was fired up at the prospect of beating him, and Russell's brigade clearly put minimal effort into cooking for him. Russell even vowed to blackball the chefs he picked for causing him to lose (even though he did plenty to lose it himself, like trying to fire two tables at once and nearly getting in a fight with Rob). Classy to the end.

Season 9

• Elise definitely takes the cake. Her irrational hatred of Carrie as well as her tendency to blame others for her mistakes and never take responsibility for her own made her extremely unpopular among her fellow chefs, as well as the audience. When Jennifer was eliminated (the two never got along to begin with), Elise mouthed off about how much of a better chef than she was, causing Jennifer to curse Elise out and flip her off when she walked off. She did, however, redeem herself after getting eliminated by being Paul's strongest cook, even putting aside her hatred of Carrie (who was also on Paul's team) to help Paul win, which he did.
• Although not nearly as bad as Elise, Chino was also a pretty big Jerkass, as he refused to take responsibility for his mistakes and was more often than not extremely rude towards a lot of the chefs, even to the extent that he made Natalie cry.

Season 10

• Clemenza was pretty abrasive sometimes, though he tends to go back and forth between Jerkass and Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• The trio of Kimmie, Robyn, and Tiffany were pretty awful, especially with their brutal treatment of Barbie. Then, the tables turned when Robyn and Kimmie had a massive blowout after the family night service.

Season 11

• Dan, who might be considered the worst of the lot, even above the likes of Joseph and Russell. Regardless of his talent Ramsay had to boot him off for his utterly toxic attitude.

Season 14

• While T was normally pretty amicable, she tended to completely flip out whenever Michelle opened her mouth, and gradually lost fans because of this.
• Meghan could also be this, as she more often than not was extremely condescending towards some of the other chefs, especially Michelle. There's also the time she basically threw a tantrum when the Red Team lost the challenge in Episode 6 (their first challenge loss since the Signature Dish Challenge, mind you) and threatened to quit the show.

Season 15

• Frank is perhaps one of the most notorious examples of this. He argued a lot with the Blue Team, and took a special disliking towards Manda.
• While not as bad as Frank, Dannie was also one of these. She would often be one of the main causes of fights in the Red Team (even more than Jackie), and refused to listen to reason. It got even worse when Hassan was transferred over to the Red Team, and her attitude towards him eventually resulted in him sinking.

Season 16

• Andrew, Matt, Johnny, and Paulie were pretty much the biggest Jerkasses of the season, and one of the main reasons the season isn't looked at in a fond light. While Paulie gets a bit less hate due to his passing and Johnny's hatred died down a bit due to him regretting his actions on the show, Andrew and Matt are still hated. Matt in particular is confirmed as a Jerkass due to him throwing racist slurs towards Hassan from Season 15 on social media.

Season 18 (Rookies Vs. Veterans)

• Despite promising at the start that she changed her attitude, Season 4's Jen proved during the Blue Team's first punishment that she has not changed after 10 years, even arguing when Sous Chef Jocky told her that she should have cleaned the mushrooms before pureeing them. And this all comes to a head during the second service, where she accused Ramsay of sabotaging her when he pulled out leeks, leading her to a midservice elimination.
• Scotley firmly established himself as a Jerkass to One (of the "crueler to one" variant) when he started to constantly bully Trev at every opportunity.

Season 19 (Las Vegas)

• Amber was pretty unapologetically mean and hypocritical, bragging about being an executive chef at 25 and pretty much immediately making enemies with the Blue Team once she got transferred over to them.
• Marc was also one, due to him being extremely petty. Granted he did tone it down around Episode 6, but in Episode 9 he returned to his Jerkass behavior. He became better in the finale dinner service for Kori, however.

Season 22 (The American Dream)

• Jason doesn’t take long to become the resident jerk, rubbing people the wrong way with his overly serious attitude, talking trash about the women and refusing to take responsibility for his mistakes during service.
  • By the Charity Dinner event, even the Red Team are taking potshots at him unprompted when talking amongst themselves, showing it's not a case of Manipulative Editing but he is genuinely disliked by everyone.