Cobbled together out of dead dreams and cardboard, the Motel 6 in Bessemer, Alabama, will take your money, but it is not clear what they will do with it. They might light it on fire and watch it burn, if they're into that. They might use your $58 to stroll mysteriously into the nearest McDonald's and announce to those assembled, "Next round's on me." Whatever they do with it, they certainly won't use it to pay anyone to clean the room. The shower floor is caked with a level of filth that turns you into a less moral person merely by looking at it. The sheets have holes in them, no doubt made by mice going out to eat for a family dinner (although even mice deserve better). Your WiFi won't work, but actually, I was impressed that they're even pretending they have it. Better to invest that money elsewhere. I suggest bleach.
Security? Bulletproof glass protects the clerk at the desk from you. Numerous signs inform you that the door cannot be opened by her and that you are being watched by security cameras. But if that starts to worry you more than you worry her, never fear: there is a man in the lot, at all hours, who stays seated in the driver's seat of a Hummer that cost more than this entire hotel. That man is wearing a shirt that says SECURITY, and he is playing with his phone. Google informs me that this probably means a drug deal is taking place. Sense of security restored.
Your TV won't work any better than your WiFi, but listen to the conversations the other guests are having! It's fun and easy to do, given that the walls were clearly designed to be listened through rather than looked at: they were painted by forcing a thousand squirrels to vomit and then using that as the paint. PETA should really be on this.
If you can ignore the bright lights outside your window, the sound of sirens, and other guests' conversations, you might try to sleep. Good luck! The bed must have been made of used Kleenex tightly stuffed into mattress-shaped plastic; no matter what position you choose, lumps poke you, reminding you of the turpitude of the world. Hotel staff offers a prize of one bottle of rubbing alcohol to anyone who can manage more than 4 hours of sleep. Doesn't sound like a great prize, you're thinking, but ask the only two guests who have won it so far: one used it to clean the floors so that walking on them with bare feet would no longer communicate a rare disease that would later cause them to fall off. The other champion sleeper drank the bottle. After more than 10 minutes here, that feels like the right decision.
I haven't even gotten to the toilet, which will slush water around lazily as though your increasingly desperate attempts to persuade it to safely conduct its contents elsewhere are no more than suggestions. "All right, all right, I'll get around to it," the toilet seems to be telling you. "I'm not any happier to work here than you are to stay here, believe me. I applied to be a toilet at a Marriott, but you gotta know somebody to get that gig."
You may protest that I should not expect that much for $58. Well, I do. A hotel doesn't actually need WiFi, TVs, or a disused pool choked with leaves and sadness. However, a hotel does need to be cleaned more than once every leap year (pity I didn't check in a month from now). If you have no more money than $58 to spend on a hotel, simply find a safe place and sleep in your car, or go to a gas station and read the ingredients on a package of beef jerky until you fall asleep standing up. It will be more restful sleep than you will ever get at the Motel 6 in Bessemer, Alabama. read more