Does Laura Betancourt Get Fired on Below Deck?

Below Deck

Photo by: Greg Endries/Bravo Was Laura Betancourt fired following a heated argument with Chief Stewardess Kate Chastain, where she told the chief stew to "check yourself?" Read on to find out.

Bravo’s Below Deck is back on Tuesday, January 15 at 9/8c, and fans of the show are curious whether or not the new third stew Laura Betancourt is still below deck with the rest of the crew, or if she’d been fired following a tense altercation with Chief Stewardess (and HBIC) Kate Chastain.

For those who need a quick recap, after Chandler Brooks was fired, Caroline Bedol put in her notice, which prompted Captain Lee to promote Ross Inia and call in backup to help Chastain out. Betancourt was Bedol’s replacement, and quickly raised some eyebrows when she started voicing her opinion on how things were run, putting her in Chastain’s bad graces. You can watch clips of the rising tension between the two in the video below:

“Honey, if you were a chief stew that knows as much as you say you do, you should already know how to do turn down,” Kate told the cameras on the show. “Laura has a lot of opinions. If Laura had ever really been a chief stew, she would put herself in my position and wouldn’t come out too hot from the start.”

The tension between the two ladies escalated quickly after Chastain checked in on Betancourt’s turndown service, where Betancourt told Kate to “check yourself,” prompting Chastain to go to Captain Lee with an ultimatum: “We can fire her, or I’ll quit.” Check out a clip of the argument below:

Laura later provided some more insight into what was going through her mind during her confrontation with Kate during the latest installment of the Below Deck Season 6 After Show. At first, she was taken aback by Kate’s comments. And then, she got angry. “Listen, like, I’ve been working hard. Recognize that, please. Like, can you recognize that I’m up at 6 every day, I don’t get to bed ’til 10? Like, I’m working hard,” she said in the above clip. “As a boss, it would have been nice for her to recognize how hard I was working, appreciate it, say thank you, as opposed to sh– on me.”

Captain Lee also called Betancourt out for her constant criticisms, writing: “I think she may want to get to know her crew more before she starts criticizing the boat, the way things, are done, how things look, and just about everything else.”

So did Betancourt lose her job? After Chastain went to Captain Lee about the third stew, the captain had a long chat with Betancourt, during which he claims she realized that she was close to losing her job and changed her attitude completely. Even Chastain said that she and Betancourt get along much better now, and that she completely changed her tune after sitting down with the captain.

“I noticed a swift change,” Chastain said in the video above. “And you know what? I love Laura now. I knew I would like her … she just needed to be knocked down a couple pegs.”

So as of right now, it doesn’t look as though Betancourt lost her job, although she is still on thin ice, according to Captain Lee. Tune in for new episodes of season six on January 15 on Bravo, with repeat episodes of the first half of the season preceding the new episode.

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