A renowned business success story that has been featured in newspapers, books and included in university marketing papers, is Barney's Motel. The motel uses workplace humour in an authentic way as a unique selling proposition and to communicate obvious shortcomings of a business that can't be easily remedied.
Using the wonders of the Wayback Machine, we've trolled around the internet graveyard and brought back to life selected pages from the deactivated Barney's Motel website.
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DOUBLE ROOMS Our double rooms have 2 beds with a space between so your sleeping partner doesn't "accidently" roll into your slumber zone. Notice the wall lamps and alarm clock. When we finally pay our power bill and get some electricity happening - these are going to be very cool. [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
| This is a different room ...really! As you can see, some of our rooms have square headboards and some have kind of rounded like a partial moon. Oh ya, half moon - that's right. We did this not because we were trying to cheap out and buy second hand headboards that didn't match. We hired a decorative consultant from somewhere who said that because people come in all shapes and sizes that our headboards should reflect this. That's why our pillows look like that, too. [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
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BATHROOMS All our bathrooms have 3 things that use water (4 if you include yourself). There's a toilet for going number one and number 2. There's a tub for going uhhh... number 3 (number 3 is going number 1 while standing up - if number 1 is what I think it is) and a sink for going number .... 6 (washing your hands is number 6 because this is where you remove the evidence of all the other numbers). [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
| TAN IN YOUR ROOM This room comes with a tanning light that will toast you to a golden brown by the time you check out in the morning. Please be sure to purchase some sun screen from our front office or that tan may start out as third degree burns! We must insist that you follow our Tanning Lights Out at 11 pm rule because with these 7,000 watt bulbs you'll be keeping your neighbours awake as well! [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
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HOLES IN WALLS Barney had holes cut into some of the walls to allow the bright police seachlights to illuminate your room in the late evening. Being so close to the north pole, our guests welcome the comforting feeling of hearing police helicopters hovering overhead as the million candlepower beams flood the motel with daytime brightness. This is why we don't allow people to leave their pets in the vehicles - can you imagine the cleanup?! [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
| TV TIME STV time is at least as important as family time so we have a room set up with a bench where no one can get in the way of watching those Janet Jackson at the Superbowl reruns. [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
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It's CURRENT Information How do you get a huge electro magnetic current happening without piling up electronic devices? Barney's a huge fan of George Lakhovsky and his Multiple Wave Ocillator and we might just have found a cure for cancer. You can try this at home by putting many things that use power - one on top of the other and voila - instant cancer cure (or cause .... I'm not quite sure). We also have cancer curing snacks in each room as well. Hey - you can get some too - they're from "Point the Bone Shaman Supplies" in Winnipeg, Manitoba! [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
| SPECIAL CHAIRS All rooms have a couple of chairs that are not facing each other so you don't have to look directly at your partner. The seats look like they can be moved but they can't. We find it makes cleaning the rooms easier for us and the cost saving to the motel far outweighs the customer complaints we get. You can't see the TV from these seats but without power there's not much sense in staring at it anyway. Each room has it's own fingerprinting kit so you can leave your prints all over our walls like everybody else. It's the only chance we have to use our Wacky Wall Washer! [ CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE ] |
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