It is very common to hear from EFL teachers in Brazilian public schools that their teaching conditions are precarious. They complain about low wages, schools with poor infrastructure, and other factors which they claim prevent them from performing high quality teaching practice. This study looks into the issues they raise in order to find out which ones they consider to be the most discouraging. Using a qualitative approach, the responses of ten teachers are initially analyzed, collected by means of an online questionnaire, and the factors that are pointed out as the most demotivating are brought up. These are categorized and in a second phase of the project another questionnaire is posted online, receiving twenty-two responses, which are analyzed. The most relevant factors are described. It is assumed that once there factors are known, strategies may be developed to act upon them and thus contribute to better teaching conditions.