Aesha Scott Reaches Her Breaking Point with Bri Muller: "I Want to Consider Letting You Go"
The Below Deck Mediterranean chief stew reveals why she's ready to make a staffing change.
On Season 9, Episode 9 of Below Deck Mediterranean, Captain Sandy Yawn threatened to fire both Bri Muller and Elena "Ellie" Dubaich as they struggled to resolve their ongoing drama. Although Episode 10 kicked off with Sandy explaining she wanted to keep thinking about her options, it seems chief stew Aesha Scott has reached a breaking point and is thinking about letting one of her team members go.
Throughout the season, Ellie and Bri have had issues related to a love triangle with Joe Bradley, team hierarchy, and the laundry room. As Aesha explained during the episode, she was starting to feel a bit helpless about managing her team.
"With my girls, it just feels like there's always something. If it's not professional, it's personal. If it's not personal, it's professional," she said. "In a way, I'm kind of failing at being a chief stew because I don't actually know what the answer is."
Although Sandy proposed Ellie and Bri sleep in separate rooms to help resolve their personal drama, one aspect of Bri's professional struggle wasn't improving: her mistakes in the laundry room. Still, Aesha hadn't given up hope.
"Bri is very emotional, but I really do understand why she's not being fired [by Sandy]," Aesha said in an interview during the August 5 episode. "She does do cabins well, and when she does help with breakfast service, she does do that well, too. Laundry is Bri's Achilles heel. If I can help her overcome that and get the squabbling sorted out, she could be a great stew. Well, a good stew. Well, a passable stew. OK, maybe she would just be a stew, but not a bad one."
However, things took a turn when yet another article of Sandy's clothing went missing, and Aesha was prepared to say goodbye to her third stew.
"I just want to be completely honest with you," she told Bri. "If you keep making these mistakes I want to consider letting you go."
Captain Sandy Yawn Slams Bri Muller's Laundry Issues
On Episode 7 of the season, Sandy expressed her frustration over the fact that her clothes were frequently missing. However, she was keeping Bri's lack of experience in mind.
"In all fairness, the third stew is entry-level. I'm not gonna fire her for losing her shirt," she said. "But this, we have to correct. We're on charter four. Bri is going to need to develop a system."
As the problem continued, Sandy's patience was running thin.
"This is the last time," she said. "Now I'm gonna get pissed. I want my clothes back."
Kate Chastain and Aesha Scott React to Bri Muller's Laundry Log "Burn Book"
Misplacing clothing wasn't Bri's only laundry-related issue. After Ellie discovered Bri's laundry log during Episode 8, she explained that she was shocked by its contents: "It was a whole list of crimes I committed in laundry."
Although Aesha shared in the Below Deck Mediterranean Season 9 After Show video above that a laundry log is "common," she noted it typically includes "just the real basics."
"Like, 'This went in the machine,' 'This got taken back,'" she added. "You don't, like, add your own comments in."
However, Kate Chastain had a different outlook on the situation.
"Here's what is going on with Bri: A laundry room has no windows. Maybe a small port hole that's usually covered," she said. "It's not a natural human situation. If you don't have music or anything, things can get weird pretty quickly. You can get cabin fever. People are just walking by dropping off their dirty stuff. And then you hear them in the crew mess, and they're eating food, all the deckhands, 'Oh wasn't the snorkeling gorgeous? All of the fish.' It's an insane asylum for a little bit."
"The laundry room can really break you," she continued. "And then all you've got is this log."
