‘Below Deck Med’: Hannah Ferrier Explains Why Using ‘Honey’ Is Different Than Pete Hunziker’s ‘Sweetie’
Bosun Malia White from Below Deck Mediterranean seemed completely floored when deckhand Pete Hunziker didn’t realize that calling his boss “sweetheart” or “sweetie” was unprofessional.
Amid the “sweetie” talk, some fans wondered about chief stew Hannah Ferrier’s use of the word, “honey.” Ferrier uses the term often when referring to her friends and some of the crew. The term is so omnipresent in Ferrier’s vocabulary, podcasters Watch What Crappens have hilariously coined one of Ferrier’s expressions as having “honey eyes.”
Ferrier also uses the term casually with both genders. But there is one person no one has ever heard Ferrier call “honey.” That’s Captain Sandy Yawn. A few fans asked about the usage and she explains how using the word “honey” differs from Hunziker calling White “sweetie.”
Ferrier calls everyone ‘honey’
Hunziker is not filmed referring to the other male deckhands as “sweetie” or “sweetheart.” But Ferrier definitely throws a lot of “honey” around with both male and female crewmembers.
“Pete can’t say sweetie. Agree completely. Hannah also can’t say honey though. No?” a fan asked on Twitter. But Ferrier said she’s not calling Yawn the term. “I’m not saying it to my boss and if any stew was uncomfortable they can say! They also call me ‘babe’, ‘chicka’ etc and it doesn’t bother me so we good…but thanks for the concern!”
She added that the interior department has nicknames for each other. Thus far Ferrier has only worked with an all-female team too. “We always have nick names for each other. Just because something doesn’t work on deck doesn’t mean it won’t work inside. If we are all fine with it then there’s really no problem!”
Ferrier later added, “As soon as I call Sandy ‘honey’ you can compare the two scenarios.”
White did not think Hunziker did it maliciously
White admits that Hunziker was a challenge on deck. In addition to calling her “sweetie” or “sweetheart” White was concerned that Hunziker would struggle to be the student.
“Pete was challenging at first,” she said on What To Do With Marshall. “I was pretty shocked to have him call me sweetheart but I don’t think he meant it very maliciously. I don’t think he meant it to be degrading.”
She also thinks he just didn’t get it. “I just truly don’t think he understood that it was very degrading. I got the question, ‘Well why didn’t you shut it down right away?’ The thing is, for me, I’m already his boss. I know that I’m going to stop it at some point. For me, that wasn’t a priority. It doesn’t phase me as much as I think it does when you hear it on TV.”
Below Deck deckhand Rhylee Gerber joked about what she would have done if Hunziker referred to her that way in White’s position. “I would have smacked those f**king sunglasses off his face and said, ‘Listen here, sweetheart, only douchebags wear white sunglasses so get back to swabbing the deck,’” she told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
