‘Below Deck Sailing Yacht’: How Dare This A-Hole Put His Hands On Madison?

I have two words for you, Below Deck Sailing Yacht: TOO SOON. Just a month after Below Deck Season 7 ended, complete with all the brus bad behavior, I’m not sure I was ready to watch another group of men behave like absolute idiots on a boat. But the latest charter guests on Below Deck Sailing Yacht somehow managed to become bigger douchebags with every passing moment — *insert sarcastic champagne emoji*.

Primary charter guest Richie Hosein, an “accomplished entrepreneur” from Long Island, brought his group of bros aboard so that they could demand to be served shrimp cocktail while parading around in their precious linens and sabering corks off champagne bottles. Eye roll emoji times infinity.

But even more inappropriate than the demands they barked out in between tequila shots was the way one charter guest, Lenny, treated second stew Madison. She worked the late service shift the night before, fielding their requests after they came back loud and drunk after a night out at the beach bar, and not long into her shift the next day she was being straight-up harassed.

While Paget noted, “These guys have no respect for anything at all,” mainly referring to how they treated the very expensive boat, it also applies to their treatment of the staff. When Madison appears on deck to make sure there’s no glass on the ground, yes, after they sabered yet another champagne bottle, Lenny tells his friends, “Look at this.” He then picks up the petite stew, even after she says, “Oh god, please don’t pick me up.”

“I’m working out!” he declares, as she has to ask THREE times as he lifts her up and down, “Please put me down, please put me down, okay Lenny, please put me down, thank you.” She’s clearly and rightfully shaken as she walks away from the guys, while he says, “Don’t tell anyone,” definitely aware that he’s in the wrong. Madison goes on to say in her interview, “I’ve never been handled like that by a charter guest before. I have like, no words.” She’s noticeably speechless and disturbed by the moment, as anyone else would be.

“What’s she gonna do, call the Greek cops?” Lenny jokes to his friends, mocking and imitating her by saying, “Oh my god please put me down.” He even brags, “Did you see what I did to the little girl on the boat? I just fucking curled her.” BRO. She is not a kettlebell. She’s a human being and woman who is doing her job and deserves your respect.

“Like, it hurt,” Madison tells Parker after he pulls her aside to see if she’s okay. “They’re not talking to you the same way that they’re talking to me,” she explains to him. “I’m trying to do it all with a smile on my face and be like, my pleasant self, but it’s really fucking hard being a girl doing this with them.” His advice is to take a deep breath, but that won’t quite fix how shaken and angry she is at that moment.

“Having a charter guest manhandle you puts you in an awkward position,” Madison said in her interview. “If you make note of this to say, Jenna or the captain, you’re putting people’s tips in jeopardy, you might piss off guests. So I’d rather just keep my mouth shut,” she said, as she continues to make shots for this group of douchebags.

Couple things here: while of course it’s easy to say she should’ve told someone (and really, Parker should have as well), it’s entirely understandable why she didn’t. She was sacrificing her own feelings for the greater good of the group, and if we find out this bunch leaves a shitty tip after all of their terrible behavior, we’ll all be throwing our screens out the window. There were a lot of elements that made this moment a perfect storm: their heavy drinking and Madison’s pleasantness (part of her job) to name just a couple, but by no means does that ever give that loser permission to touch her in any way, let alone lift her off the ground without her consent. It’s a complete invasion of personal space and safety and is in no way appropriate, especially considering the whole point was for him to show off his biceps to his drunkass friends. The moment was not only scary for Madison, it was infuriating to watch. It may seem harmless to some people, but only to the ones that are bigger, stronger, and drunker than the woman simply trying to do her job.

Somehow, these a-holes only continue to get worse in the rest of this week’s episode and their horrendous behavior continues into next week as well. May you avoid hearing the words “shrimp cocktail” in the meantime.

Below Deck Sailing Yacht airs Monday at 9pm ET/PT on Bravo. 

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