Colorado restaurant forced to apologize after posting bathroom sign referencing slavery

You'd think it would be a lot easier to open a successful restaurant business without accidentally offending hundreds of people at once.

Deliberately is a different question, sure; I suppose it's really easy to decide to open up a vegan restaurant, or implement policies like banning children which bend various members of the public out of shape. If you're short on time or creativity, you can always just be racist.

But so, so many times, restaurant authorities go out of their way to be edgy or humorous, and remind us all very quickly why they work in restaurants and not in the writer's room of a successful sitcom, for example. Case in point; this restaurant out in Colorado, which has been forced into a hasty apology for referencing child slavery in a bathroom sign, somehow.

Let's just dive right into the insanity.

Let's imagine you're hungry in Colorado, and decide to head to the Lone Spur Cafe in Durango to sate the rumbling in your belly. Let's imagine that at some point, you've got to head to the bathroom to relieve yourself,  or wash the bacon and scrambled eggs off your face. For fun, let's also say you're a descendent of a slave.

This is the exact situation that Nikki Moss found herself in when she went to the bathroom at Lone Spur. So imagine her reaction when she found this particular sign waiting for her when she got there. Aping one of those Old West-style posters, the sign reads: "Unattended & unruly children will be arrested & sold as slaves."

Credit: Durango Herald

Moss... was unhappy. “I was shocked to see that sign,” she said in a phone interview, and recalls going up to the desk and telling the manager how disturbing she found the whole thing, asking them to take the sign down.

Fact fact: this all occurred on September 9, but when her friend Claire Raines visited the restaurant last week, she found the sign still there. “She [Nikki Moss] and I both believe that if something bothers you and you can do something about it or even just try to do something about it, you should,” Raines said in an interview with the Durango Herald.

For what it's worth, Lone Spur CEO Cory Farley waded in on the issue, saying he's contacted the manager to discuss the sign with him, and reached out to Moss to personally apologise. “Our intent is never to be offensive or insensitive to anyone,” he added, explaining that the sign isn't posted at any of the other locations, nor had anybody else complained about it before.

It's a shame, really - Moss said that apart from that one (admittedly pretty big) thing, she actually had a great time at the Lone Spur. The food was great, the service and decoration wasn't bad either, but her experience was ruined by that darned sign. “It was amazing with the exception of the insensitivity of the sign,” Moss explained.

This slave descendent has also said she will return to Durango to visit her friend, but if the sign at the Lone Star's still there, she won't be making a second visit.