The Scrumpy Jack, Observatory, Cape Town

2 Reviews on “The Scrumpy Jack, Observatory, Cape Town”

• Ulisha Moodley

  Gosh this place really needs a revamp. It’s stuffy and dusty. Went once with Sashen and his friends to watch the soccer. Can’t say I’d ever go back again. I had a coke, and that was as far as it was going to go. Major upkeep needs to take place.

  January 5, 2017, 2:35 am

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• Stefan Els

  What horrible, bloody-minded, unintelligent staff this place has. I am not surprised by the other lacklustre reviews. Anyway, I was finishing off the last swallow of my small bottle of coke when I went inside. I wanted to order steak egg and chips and a few ciders on tap. The place was empty except for one other person. It was half-past three so I wanted to go to the back where a couple of women were standing, perhaps the owners but certainly official staff, and ask them if their kitchen was open and also order my cider because that was where the draught taps and bar counter were. That is when the one woman officiously told me I was not allowed to drink my cool drink. I looked at my bottle. It was almost empty. One swallow would be all it would take to finish it. If the silly woman had just kept her mouth shut I would have finished it before I reached them, and I could have placed my orders without incident. But no! She insisted that I could not finish off my coke. I tried to reason with her, saying that I was intending to order a meal and cider but I needed to finish my coke before I could start on my cider. Besides, I said, it is practically finished! The world would not come to an end if I finished my coke before I started on a cider. I certainly was not going outside again just for the sake of taking one last swalllow of coke and then coming back in again five seconds later. Really, what would be the point of that except to unnecessarily inconvenience a would-be customer? This woman was impervious to reason. I have rarely encountered sheer bloody-mindedness like this. I understand that rule is there so that you can prevent people from sitting down and then eating and drinking their own stuff and not ordering from the establishment. But that was obviously not the case here. There was no point in applying the rule this case. I asked the woman whether she wanted me spend money there or not. I pointed out to her that finishing off that cool drink would not harm the establishment in any way, on the contrary it would allow them to gain another paying customer. If I had walked in there with a full coke then she might have had a point, but one swallow of coke? It was ridiculous. I told her I wanted to order a steak and a cider but that I obviously needed to finish my coke before having the cider. I might as well have tried to reason with a block of wood.I hope this place continues to get bad reviews, it really deserves them. How that silly woman is in business, I don’t know. If she was not the owner then the owner should certainly train the staff to act more intelligently. Perhaps some people are just not capable of seeing the bigger picture or of knowing when to apply certain rules and when to let them slide. Rules like that are intended for certain circumstances only and it is a pity when staff have just not been trained to think for themselves and are only capable of blindly applying rules no matter what the circumstances, like some sort of closed minded robot. I was going to take that last swallow anyway which would have solved the problem but then I realized I did not want to support a place that treats one so shabbily. They don’t deserve my money or yours. Seriously, go elsewhere. There are loads of other great little places in the area.

  July 21, 2015, 2:35 am

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