VCE test error sees Melbourne café burned on social media

A cafe in Melbourne’s north has been caught in a case of mistaken identity after VCE students bombarded it with negative online reviews as part of an exam. 

Students were called on to take action against a fictional café named in their exam that unfortunately bore the same name as the Calmer Cafe in Aberfeldie. In the VCE English exam, the fictional business was labelled as “bland” and “soulless”.

More than 43,000 students sat the exam which had the question about fictional customer Jonty Jenkins who was unhappy about a “tablet-wielding” employee with a man bun and complained that the coffee was awful.

Within hours of the exam finishing, some students took to the internet, leaving comments such as “I’d find better coffee at (Tullamarine) Airport”, “disgusting coffee” and “you are responsible for my ATAR”.

One review stated: “I wrote about this in my exam and it seems that this is a terrible cafe with poor service”.

Needless to say the owner of the café was less than happy with seeing their café’s reputation destroyed online.

Speaking to The Age, manager Elise Jenkins said she was “shaking from head to foot”.

“We are a small business and these reviews mean a lot,” she said. “Come in and see how nice our coffee is and our staff instead of going online and slamming us. I’m just grateful that I know our loyal customers know the reviews are not true.”

A spokesman for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) has apologised to the cafe’s owners and customers, saying it understood the posts have caused the business “considerable effort and inconvenience”.

“The VCAA has apologised for the inadvertent similarity in business names that led to the surge of social media and web posts, and has offered its assistance to have these posts removed as soon as possible,” a spokesperson said.

Sheridan Randall, 5^th November 2018