"Workplace Humor"
Workplace humor can make you money! Special Note/Please Read: Barney's Motel is a fantastic motel; you will love your stay! This article is about how the former owner, Barry Williams, used humor to transform the motel into the wonderful place it is today. It has become Barry Williams’ calling card. Of course, he didn't know he would become a celebrity when he took the job as the manager of a (self-described) flea-bag motel in Manitoba, Canada called Barney's Motel. How could he have guessed? Barney's was an archaic building with outdated plumbing, was plagued by swarms of flies, and the only regular customers were prostitutes. In fact, the only reason the owners hadn't torn down Barney's Motel was that it was too expensive to demolish it! So why, within a few years, did marketing guru Seth Godin feature Barry in his book "99 Cows"? Why were newspapers across Canada doing stories about Barney's Motel? And why is there now a university in Australia that uses Barney's Motel as a model for teaching marketing? Workplace humor. Plain and simple…and without a doubt – workplace humor. Motel/hotel managers take note! Anyone running a business not as profitable as you'd like take note! In this interview, Barry Williams lays out a blueprint for using workplace humor to supercharge your profits. Barry Williams used workplace humor to take a god-forsaken dump, one step from being demolished, and created a profitable (even famous) motel. In this interview, Cliff Kuhn, M.D. gets Barry to spill his guts and reveal how he accomplished this modern marketing miracle using workplace humor. The Laugh Doctor: Please tell us about yourself. Has humor always played a role in your life? How and why? Barry Williams: I believe that humor is the most powerful perception-altering tool I have ever encountered. With an incredible capacity to modify every situation, humor can mitigate predicaments so thoroughly that negative events soon become positive circumstances creating delightful memories for anyone inspired by them. 
If it is true that "feelings are facts" - and I believe they are - then it stands to
reason that we would be foolish not to employ the awesome power of humor to positively influence the feelings of the people around us.
I am astonished at the effect humor has had in my life. I was always intrigued to see how I could alter almost anyone's intentions just by getting them to laugh. Simply tickling a desired playmate could release them from their unhappy demeanor into wanting to come outside to play. (Oh, and bring your toys, too.) I invested little time analyzing why humor worked, all I knew was it seemed to be effective with nearly everybody. And dang, it was so easy to use! As I matured into a young adult I felt increasingly disappointed that my friend's humor focused mainly on sarcastic put- downs. I yearned for earlier days when we Eventually, I was able to see civilized humor for what it is - an awesome intellectual tool for altering the perception of almost every circumstance imaginable. I soon learned that there was a tipping point with humor. Opportunities to use it revealed themselves on so many occasions that I had to carefully pick and choose my funny comments lest I overwhelm my fickle audiences with jocularity. The Laugh Doctor: What about when you became an adult? How did you hold onto your strong sense of humor? Barry Williams: Upon entering the job market, I quickly realized that the use of workplace humor wasn't integrated very well with employment. Subordinate merriment would be pro-actively squelched with stern management warnings like: "That'll be enough wise cracks out of you" or "There'll be none of that funny stuff around here". Holy cow Mr. Manager - lighten up! Are we allowed no fun at work or what? I noticed that the grown-ups at work seemed to avoid creating happiness like the plague and the little that was exhibited was mostly via critical jokes at the expense of some racial group or folks of a certain sexual persuasion. Workplace humor played such an important role in my character during those early years that I satisfied my need for having fun through pranks like parking in my fearless leader's "General Manager Parking Only" stall. He was extremely dismayed that his threats regarding my continued employment wouldn't keep my car out of his spot and our mutual need for recognition fueled a exciting (to me, anyway) multi week game of "whoever gets to work first gets the parking spot". At the time, it was a too funny quest which forced me out of bed much earlier than I would have preferred on many cold mornings. My attention to workplace humor slowly diminished over the next two decades, as I became further immersed in the world of commerce. The seriousness of this "real" world ensured my nose seldom left the grindstone and with the years now quickly slipping by, thoughts of the lighter side of life seldom entered my mind. Plenty of opportunities existed where humor would have provided welcome stress relief for my co-workers and me but with an abundance of hectic duties heaped upon us, it was a foreign language seldom spoken. It wasn't until I experienced business challenges for which I could find no workable solutions that the thought to use humor reoccurred to me. It was many years later, while facing the dismal realization that local natural disasters would dictate the failure of a motel my wife and I were managing in British Columbia, that we would allow workplace humor to rescue us. Now in my early 40's, I rekindled my relationship with humor in the workplace and began employing funny signs to draw attention to our small property. That modest effort attracted more awareness than we could have possibly imagined and my love affair with the wondrous power of humor was awakened. 
Having employed workplace humor for a few years now, I understand that using it for "attention only" is wasting the majority of its marvelous capability. The power of workplace humor to effect attitude and ultimately behavior is virtually untapped in our melancholy culture. Today, I firmly believe that the intelligent, purposeful use of workplace humor can effectively alleviate much of the physical and emotional stress that complicates the lives of so many of us.
The Laugh Doctor: Describe how and why you took the job at Barney's motel and what you found. Barry Williams: My wife and I accepted the job of managing Barney's Motel after 20 years of operating smaller hotels and motels around western Canada. Barney's Motel, located in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada was a flea bitten, hooker-infested dive (to put it nicely) when we assumed management of it. Even though the motel was past its prime, my wife and I saw it as an opportunity to make something from nothing and approached the owners in February 2001 in an attempt to convince them that we could make the motel into a viable business again. They had recently been quoted $70,000 to demolish the building and eventually relented to our persistence - deciding that it might be cheaper to allow us to run the motel into the ground rather than getting it knocked down on purpose. Having recently inherited Barney's Motel from their fathers, the new owners were already committed to their current professions which precluded them from operating it themselves. They assured my wife and me that we could proceed with the business any way we chose as long as it required no additional financial obligation from them. That sounded like a great opportunity to us - and it was. We assumed control of the motel halfway through the summer of 2001 and only two weeks after being allowed the challenge of turning Barney's around, we felt certain we had made an enormous mistake. Every morning we faced angry customers who were eager to recount a litany of reasons why they should receive refunds on their rooms. Adhering to our new policy of cheerfully providing a refund when one was requested, we willingly granted them but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that our daily system of refunds wasn't going to work for long. Remedies were urgently required and the clock was ticking. We were extremely disillusioned that this undertaking was much tougher than we had anticipated and would require solutions we saw faint hope of providing. Only our commitment to success kept my wife and me going through those early, most difficult days at Barney's Motel.
The Laugh Doctor: What led you to try workplace humor at Barney's? What had you tried previously? What were the initial reactions from staff and guests? Barry Williams: All of the initial challenges we faced at Barney's Motel were intensely disheartening. No matter what we attempted, we were unable to locate workable solutions to the multitude of problems that plagued us. Professionals we approached for assistance were quick to inform us that our efforts would be fruitless. Been there, done that, they would say. Their advice to us was always the same - the challenges are unsolvable. And every morning we received those same aggravated complaints from our customers. There was no cold water in the rooms due to the close proximity of the supply lines (the hot water pipes heated up the water in the cold water pipes), the toilets where steaming and usually someone or their spouse had received second degree burns as a "wake up call" during their morning shower. To add insult to injury, if the outside temperature climbed above freezing, the motel would be covered with huge black flies that crapped and buzzed and buzzed and crapped all over everything. The water problem was definitely structural but those damn flies were driving our customers (and us) crazy! Personal humor definitely helped us retain our sanity in those early times but it took quite a while to figure out how to use it in overcoming the seemingly insurmountable operational problems we faced. What is a person to do when there seems to be no plausible solution? Tearing out the motel walls in order to separate the hot and cold water lines was not an option as we didn't have the extra two gazillion dollars it would have taken to do so. After contemplating every remedy we could imagine for this skin scorching challenge, the only remaining option was to put up warning signs in every bathroom. I felt that if warning signs were our only alternative, they would somehow have to align our customer's frustration with our own feelings of futility. It was only after facing the dilemma of failure that I considered using workplace humor. Even then I felt a little foolish contemplating the use of workplace humor (especially after receiving so many serious customer complaints) but I also knew we had no choice. The jig was up and our complaint jar was full to the brim. I produced a small, humorous sign begging for our customer's patience regarding the lack of cold water and attached it to the bathroom mirror in each of our 38 rooms. We crossed our fingers, held our breath and waited for the inevitable customer comments the following morning. There were NO COMPLAINTS the next day! We were astonished! While the lack of customer protests shocked us, it was the compliments for using humor on our small bathroom signs that was intriguing. We were getting positive comments for the first time! Wow - what an excellent feeling that was! What surprises me now is that even though we had surmounted the water challenge by employing humorous signage, it didn't occur to me immediately to use it with our fly problem. No, that would be too easy - we still had a bunch of other expensive solutions to attempt first. 
Self-confident from our water challenge victory, we proceeded to attack our fly problem with a vengeance, enlisting every (standard) weapon in our arsenal to destroy them.
We pounded the flies with several hard right jabs containing hundreds of cans of Raid bug killer. While those pesky critters were still wobbly, we mercilessly followed up with numerous left hooks, spraying copious amounts of malodorous and deadly creepy crawler chemicals with a fervor that would have made the manufacturers of Agent Orange envious. When that didn't work we deployed hard-to-hide chemical pest strips, flies-buzzing-until-they-die sticky strips, special fly (and dust) attracting lights, nausea producing stinky outdoor fly traps, and houses for birds who relish fly snacks. We even attached dozens of bags of water to the exterior of the motel after being told about a curious old wives trick for fly dispersal. (The bags were great for conversation but they affected the flies naught) We couldn't win for love or money. We had tried our damnedest to resolve our fly problem but they refused to stay eliminated. We were beside ourselves with hopelessness. Our final solution slaughter program and the continuation of providing refunds because the flies were winning had by this time cost us several thousand dollars. Even our local pest companies could not help us annihilate those despicable beggars. One night my exasperated, fly despising wife suggested we hang an insect liquidation tool in each room and let our customers help us kill the flies. Still hesitant to admit defeat, I felt that installing fly swatters would only further alert our customers to our filthy challenge. Unless we paid a bounty... That was it - the big idea we had been looking for! Not just a solution but an opportunity to reap fame and glory for being the first business in Canada to offer a bounty for the destruction of insects. Oh, the Fly Gods were smiling upon us that day! I headed back to our poster generating machine and tapped out another humorous sign exclaiming "Barney Hates Flies". Combined with a few reasons why fly hatred was warranted, each sign informed readers of a 10 cent bounty which would be rightfully due them for each lifeless carcass delivered to our office. I excitedly affixed a humorous poster and a life-ending swatter in every room. Our customers raved about the signs and eagerly joined the bounty hunt. Complaints were reduced to near zero and refund requests plummeted! We happily paid out $176.00 in bounties (1760 dead flies!) the first year and soon began stocking candy in the motel lobby so we could remunerate our height challenged bounty hunters in a currency more appreciated by them. Our staff loved the use of workplace humor at the motel and was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and non-combative our customers had become. It's amazing what a night of killing can do for a person! What intrigued me was the fact that nothing had changed. We were still swamped by flies and the water problem was as blistering as ever. The marvelous reality that using humor on a few small signs could produce such a paradigm shift in our customer's attitudes was nothing short of incredible!
The Laugh Doctor: When and what was your first inkling that workplace humor was going to work? Barry Williams: Barney Hates Flies was the concept that taught us to utilize workplace humor for every aspect of our business. From that point forward, we went hog wild on the funny signage thing and adopted workplace humor as our Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for the motel. Seth Godin's acceptance of some of our creative business practices for publication in his ebook titled 99 Cows was a crowning moment of glory for us. Here was a world-renowned author recognizing Barney's Motel as being worthy of mention in a book that would be read by thousands of people. That really felt great and encouraged us to find additional methods of utilizing workplace humor in our business.
The Laugh Doctor: Describe the evolution of Barney's under your guidance and workplace humor's role in that evolution. Barry Williams: Even though we originally utilized workplace humor as a method of last resort, it soon became the identifying factor for every aspect of our enterprise. Whether it was a simple "help wanted" classified ad in our local paper or our exterior signage, we began using humor as a standard expression for our business. On our large main sign's reader board we wrote "ROOMS SO CLEAN EVEN OUR MOTHERS ARE PROUD" and we purchased a couple of portable signs to enable us to use workplace humor in marketing Barney's Motel to highway traffic. When we decided to include a continental breakfast with our rooms and wanted to inform potential customers of the wide variety we were providing, we listed this on our sign: "FREE ROOM WITH EVERY $59 BREAKFAST". People loved it! Within weeks, it became normal for us to receive several daily complements for our use of clever signage and in-room humor. Our repeat business went through the roof (the motel value nearly tripled in 3 years) and we often heard comments of referrals from customers, saying that so-and-so had sent them to us with the assurance that they would laugh their heads off at Barney's Motel. We plastered our personal van with taglines like: "ONE NIGHT AT BARNEY'S WILL CURE YOU OF SLEEPING AROUND" and it wasn't uncommon to receive shouted comments from folks around our small city saying "we love your funny signs on the highway and ads in the paper!" We were also very grateful for the caliber of employee that our humorous classified ads attracted. Our pay scale certainly wasn't the draw. (As our employees would inform us.) Applicants felt that Barney's was somewhere they could come and have fun as well as work. And they were right - surrounded by workplace humor, who could help but have fun? This is an example of the type of ad I placed in our paper:
A couple of years into our management of Barney's, our belief in workplace humor was put to the test. A guest (with a history of burning hotels - we found out later) started a blaze that consumed an entire building housing 20 of our recently renovated rooms. The ensuing fire destroyed 55% of our underinsured business and left our future extremely uncertain. 
In a state of confusion the day after our devastating fire, we received a telephone call from Mike Kerr, a Canadian humorist. A friend of Mike's had recently stayed at Barney's and was impressed with our use of humor. Mike's call was to inform us that the Canadian Therapeutic Humor Association was going to nominate Barney's for an award recognizing our use of humor in business.
Initially, I thought this was some kind of sick joke that someone was playing on us. Here we were, still very unsure of our future yet poised to be recognized as leaders in the use of humor in business?! I dragged myself over to the computer to see if there was such a group - and there was! Wow! An award for using workplace humor? Right on! Mike's phone call encouraged us to turn the corner on our loss and begin viewing this challenge as an opportunity to use the healing benefits of workplace humor. We quickly realized that anyone could be happy when everything was going great and this misfortune was a fabulous occasion to prove that humor could shift even our own perception. We rallied our employees to assure them that we were forging ahead and Barney's would live on. With the motel now less than half the pre-fire size, letters of recommendation were typed up for the employees that would unfortunately be laid off, our suppliers were informed that we would carry on and I contacted the local newspaper with a story of our desire to continue. Barney's Motel appeared mortally wounded after the fire, with an ugly burnt out hulk of a building (awaiting demolition) on one end of our undamaged wing of rooms. The blackened structure threw an ominous pallor over our entire operation and due to a pending fire investigation to determine cause, it wasn't going away any time soon. On our portable highway sign in front of the undamaged wing of rooms, I put up this message:
Police, fire and ambulance drivers were also thanked on our sign but it was our willingness to use workplace humor immediately following the fire that allowed Barney's Motel to be mentioned in a Globe and Mail article on business humor a few months later. I'm proud of the fact that we were able to follow through with our philosophy and put our workplace humor where our fire was - it was a great feeling! The Laugh Doctor: Have you had any other work experiences, before and after, in which workplace humor played a prominent role? Results? Barry Williams: I feel fortunate that I had workplace humor to turn to in those times where nothing else seemed to work. A few years before my wife and I managed Barney's Motel, we were operating a small motel called the Travelers Rest Motel in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. 
The motel is located on the shores of scenic Shuswap Lake and the hospitality business in that area had been ravaged by the "Silver Creek Blaze" in August of 1998. Most of our room reservations cancelled due to the widespread devastation and tourists stayed away in droves. The owner of the Travelers Rest Motel lived in Calgary and was loath to spend any money on marketing as he felt it would be fruitless given the circumstances.
We disagreed. I started utilizing our large highway sign to gain more attention for our motel. The first message I erected garnered us a fair amount of recognition and increased our business by 15%. This is what I put on it: I was caught off guard by some people who were actually disappointed that there wasn't a pool in each room. (The sign was a joke regarding the bathtub) However, the majority of our customers appreciated our attempt at workplace humor and forgave our embellishment after stopping in to see whether the pool thing was legit. The Travelers Rest Motel is situated 21 miles west of Sicamous (an adjacent town whose motels and hotels were also experiencing low traffic levels) and our attempt at workplace humor was about to involve them. The local news paper in Salmon Arm ran a story about tourism being negatively affected by the disasters and in it they described the length which motels and hotels were resorting to in order to attract business. Their story was accompanied by a photo of our motel sign which read: When the owner of the Travelers Rest Motel phoned me from his home in Calgary to tell me to take the sign down because the Sicamous Chamber of Commerce had contacted him, I knew we were onto something. They were concerned about the power of our sign! The owner's disdain of my marketing techniques was evident to me upon his next visit to the motel when I noticed his disapproving glare at my most recent message to potential highway customers: He was the type of fellow who could easily hide his sense of humor and looking back, I believe it was that last message that severely reduced our opportunity for a profitable retirement package from the Travelers Rest Motel. I find it interesting that it never occurred to me to use workplace humor inside that business - even after realizing its potential on our sign. If someone who understands the capability of workplace humor doesn't think to use it fully, how difficult must it be for a person who is unfamiliar with its possibilities?
The Laugh Doctor: Is workplace humor, the way you've used it at Barney's, applicable to any hotel management? Why or why not? Barry Williams: Workplace humor can be used in any business. (Except perhaps, for the front end of a funeral parlor) There are so many aspects of everyday corporate life that scream out for fun and blameless levity. The proliferation of comics like Dilbert lead the way to the great expanse of gut wrenching laughter (and the attitudes that follow it) awaiting those brave managers who are willing to redefine the boundaries of normal. Signs indicating: slippery steps, parking areas, no smoking areas, and employee direction signs can all be produced in a whimsical fashion. If you are really serious about setting your business apart from the crowd, why not consider using workplace humor? Producing signs that are funny yet instructive will elevate you in the battle for top of mind awareness of most people who see them - and that's a tough contest to win in these competitive times. I've proven workplace humor's ability to overcome any challenge I put to it. Even my own doubts about its validity were no match for the true power of healthy laughter's intervention. I wouldn't hesitate to find a way to use amusement even in the darkest moments - that's where workplace humor's capacity shines brightest.
The Laugh Doctor: What would you recommend to a hotel manager who wants to try workplace humor? How might she start? How might she measure the results...what would she look for to know humor was having an impact? Barry Williams: Here is the system I use to produce humorous ideas - I call it the idea pipe. It begins with pretending ideas are spring water flowing down a pipe. Unless you're real thirsty, don't drink the first water that comes out because it might be more sludge than water. (Wait a minute, that's called coffee!) Like most springs, the one feeding your idea pipe continues to flow once it's uncapped so there's no need to accept the first coffee out. I've found that if I allow the ideas to evolve, usually the 7th or 8th concept is much better than the first. And with your idea pipe awaiting uncapping, workplace humor can then be used in nearly every instance where signs are produced to convey instruction or warning. The interesting aspect of utilizing comedy in signage is that more people seem to pay attention and follow through with the instruction while developing a "feel" for the business courageous enough to provide such signage. My own belief is that workplace humor acts like a beacon that attracts our attention - cutting through the information overload that inundates us everyday. Here are a few opportunities to utilize workplace humor in a hotel:
Reading the log became a daily "feel good" ritual for anyone who was interested in how we were creating happiness in our customer's lives.
The Laugh Doctor: Describe the "fame" that has resulted at Barney's. In what news/media outlets and books has your story been chronicled? Barry Williams: These are a few methods that brought "fame" to us for using workplace humor in our business.
Do yourself and your enterprise a favor by taking the humorous road less traveled in business. There's plenty of room on that path and it's a heck of a lot more fun!
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