Can I get...............................please

[Kowalski]

I was standing next to the bar last night and someone asked the barman. "Can I get 2 pints of fosters and a lemonade please?" It bugged me for about 5 minutes. Was she asking if she could go behind the bar and help herself or did she want to be served?

It annoys me even more in Sandwich shops, "Can I get ham and coleslaw on brown", on brown? in brown seems more correct to me.

Is anyone else annoyed by this? Is Friends to blame?

[EIM]

Can I get...............................please

I started this very thread on the new old OTF. As a former barman, it bugs the fucking shit out of me. And yet I think I do it occasionally.

[WOM]

Can I get...............................please

A lot of people are annoyed by this. There were threads dedicated to it on OldTF.
I, however, am not one of those people. I'm one of the 'get over it' set.

[Kowalski]

Can I get...............................please

The thread may have been before my time on OTF.

[San Bernardhinault]

Can I get...............................please

It annoys me. It annoys me most when I find myself doing it and having to think really hard to work out what I should be saying instead.

[Wyatt Earp]

Can I get...............................please

WOM: yeah, but it's part of your culcha. Over here, it's people who want to pretend to be American. They probably drink pissy bland lager out of the bottle as well.

[WOM]

Can I get...............................please

I'm imagining you visiting a Southern Baptist church, and the preacher shouting "Can I get an amen?" and you bellowing back "It's 'May I have'!".

[WOM]

Can I get...............................please

As you well know, there's no such thing as a discernable Canadian culcha. And loath as I am to admit it, we probably drink as much near-frozen pig piss out of bottles as do our neighbours to the south. However, less of it is drunk from cans. Er...tins.

[Crusoe]

Can I get...............................please

Can I have a witness?

[evilC]

Can I get...............................please

This winds me up, too.

No - in fact, it doesn't wind me up so much when there is a polite 'please' at the end of it. Unfortunately, the type of person who uses this phrase I have increasingly frequently witnessed not just omitting the 'please', but not even bothering to make eye contact with the person serving them, instead choosing to concentrate on rummaging in their wallet/bag. I believe that this attitude doesn't exactly make people in 'service' positions want to improve their courtesy or efficiency either.

The other habit that does my head in is one I witnessed yesterday in our canteen: some bloke not even pausing in the conversation he was having on his mobile, but instead just dumping his selection down in front of the canteen assistant and expecting her to get on with it. Gah! Ignorant, pompous fucks!

[Kowalski]

Can I get...............................please

It sounds even better when "....yeah." is put onto the end of the sentence.

[WOM]

Can I get...............................please

You stood beside Gordon Ramsay in a pub?

[Kowalski]

Can I get...............................please

No, there was no profanity used.

[linus]

Can I get...............................please

was standing next to the bar last night and someone asked the barman. "Can I get 2 pints of fosters and a lemonade please?" It bugged me for about 5 minutes.

It used to bug me that people would drink bad beer but i got over it.

[ad hoc]

Can I get...............................please

I once did this in a pub with noj (though of course because noj and I are normal human beings the phrase was actually "Can I get two pints of bitter please?"). He abused me mercilessly for my new-found American ways, though it wasn't for a while that I actually understood what I'd said to give my transatlanticness away.

[erwin]

Can I get...............................please

.

I f*cking hate it. It's just mindless adoption of north American vernacular in the belief that it sounds cool. Even WORSE is the rising tone (used by a Briton) in an affirmative sentence, as if it were a question.

On the 'can I'/'may I' question ... we had a chemistry teacher at school (an insane fascist who could speak Esperanto and play the tuba ... although not at the same time and not, thankfully, in class) who, if the physics teacher next door asked you to go into the chemistry lab to get an extra stool, would respond to your question "Can I get a stool, sir?" with: "I don't know, boy, CAN you?" (i.e. "are you able to?")

You're (who knows, 'were') a c*nt, Morry Bale.

.

[EIM]

Can I get...............................please

My stock response to "Can I get..." used to be "No. But if you ask me nicely I'll get it for you." But I stopped saying that after a short while, as it made me sound like a right cunt.

[Wyatt Earp]

Can I get...............................please

Yeah, it would have.

You can't really win against these people.

[Guest]

Can I get...............................please

we had a chemistry teacher at school (an insane fascist who could speak Esperanto and play the tuba

Anyone who speaks esperanto should be forced to sit and watch this film starring William Shatner over and over again.

[beak]

Can I get...............................please

some bloke not even pausing in the conversation he was having on his mobile, but instead just dumping his selection down in front of the canteen assistant and expecting her to get on with it

On the other side of the coin, there's the ignorant fucks in newsagents and off licences who do the same when selling me fags and a newspaper.

[Wyatt Earp]

Can I get...............................please

Yeah, I hate that. Middle-aged Indian guys seem to go in for it a lot, for some reason.

[NHH]

Can I get...............................please

There's a guy in a news and sweets kiosk at platforms 13 and 14 at Clapham Junction who appears to be surgically attached to his mobile, and mumbles the price of your purchase, you make a best guess and then he acts all huffy as he then tells you again with clearer enunciation. twat.

[Gangster Octopus]

Can I get...............................please

There's a bloke who works on one of the temporary stalls in that scabby shopping thing opposite Harrow-On-The-Hill tube who has a habit of asking "Can I ask you a question?". To which I reply "You just have". I am quite the wit.

[ursus arctos]

Can I get...............................please

Wyatt's observation is interesting to me because New York cabbies from the subcontinent are known to spend their entire shifts speaking to their colleagues driving other cabs, not even pausing to tell their passengers the fare (instead relying on the meter).

It was even more disconcerting before headsets became obligatory, but still doesn't match the unsettling experience of having one's Milanese cabbie watch a Moto GP race on an in-dash television while navigating city centre traffic.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Can I get...............................please

I do this. Sorry.