Why does service have a bad name?

It's certainly worth saying up front that one big reason service has a bad name, and can be a tough sell, is because it used to be (and still is) denigrated in many societies.
Part of my family comes from the American south, where for a long time it wasn't customary to see "white people" waiting tables, cleaning, caring for other people's children, or working at gas stations.
I remember my grandmother being truly scandalized and confused when I was working as a waitress in California. In her view, this kind of work was beneath me.
Her view opened my eyes. It hadn't really occurred to me that any kind of work could be beneath me. Work could be difficult, low paid, more or less to my liking; many things, but not beneath me. But looking at it through her eyes, I understood that waiting tables wasn't regarded very well by people like my grandmother. She had always worked in office jobs, what we used to call "white collar" jobs (or, believe it or not, "pink collar" jobs, the ones dominated by women); she'd never put on an apron at work.
I stopped to consider my job, and my coworkers. It was certainly true that a lot of them hadn't been to college and weren't planning to go. But they were really good at their jobs, and they taught me a lot. Most of the waitresses I worked with could remember a ton of information, carry seven or eight plates of food, multitask circles around most people I had ever met, and do it all more or less charmingly. Many of them were truly kind and willing to make an extra effort for people who needed it. And yet some huge number of people in our society were thinking that our work was low, not respectable, even as they enjoyed that timely coffee refill, that sympathetic ear.
So I'd like to pause in my story now, to ask, what do you think? When you hear or see the word service, what comes to mind? If you don't work in service, would it be "beneath you"? And if you do, have you experienced negative attitudes from those around you towards your work?

Service origins

Once a waitress, a barrista, a cafe manager, a technical services coordinator, an artist's model, a dresser, an editor, a operations manager, a scenic painter, a retail manager, a shop assistant, a receptionist, a director of studies.
Now... A teacher, a member of the People Development Support team at the leading job site in Spain.
Most of a life, so far, spent in service occupations of one kind or another.
Some people would argue that being a scenic painter or an editor is not being in service. And I suppose that's the point of original service, that any professional endeavor is inherently involved in service, or should be...