Q&A With Alex Henry Foster
[Part 2]
As a hotel owner yourself, what is the ultimate thrill you would like to experience?
Alex: It’s about meeting people with whom I would never have the privilege to share moments such as those otherwise, as well as seeing them being positively impacted by their stay as they are getting back to the stream of their lives. It’s all about the human experience.
Are you the type to leave a note at the front desk after your stay? If so, what type of note are you leaving… the coolest one and the worst one?
Alex: In fact, I am. I like it, it humanizes my passage to an otherwise impersonal type of environment and emphasizes the interaction I had with some of the staff members. The coolest one? Good question…I’m trying to be positive even when everything has gone wrong. If I had to pick one, it would be when I sent flowers to a clerk who was about to give birth to her first child. She was so alive, it was incredibly invigorating to witness her joie de vivre. The worst was probably while on vacation in the Caribbeans with the band and our label’s staff. A French Canadian man was having dinner right beside our 20+ group table with his wife. If we were relatively quiet for a group of our size, that man became the center of attention of the whole place when he started screaming insanities at the server who was super nice and friendly. He kept screaming at him and saying that he would do everything for him to lose his job because he was supposedly too slow at pouring more, and more, wine in his glass. Jeff and I intervened, telling him to stop treating that poor guy like his own personal slave. He yelled at us and threatened to get us out of the island, as he was so and so… Mister important bla bla bla. So Jeff and I called security on the guy who kept screaming at us, all the way to the main lobby. We raised the waiter’s arms in the air and everyone in the restaurant applauded him. We collected the names of the people and their room number to drop those at the lobby and make sure that no retaliation would be held against the server. So that was a pretty weird situation. I figured that with all the bad people he had to deal with, that was a major victory for his view of humanity.