I’m not even sure anyone around here even has a “get me” or “can I have”. We just say what we want with “please” at the end. Or just “I’ll have…” I assume that’s normal around the UK?
Someday everyone will be American. Your puny culture will be wiped out and replaced. People in shops in every corner of the world will step up to the register and say, "can I get..." Accept your fate, man.
It is, yes, to an extent. I usually go with “Hi. Bacon roll with red, please” But if you’re going to go with “Can I...” then it’s ‘have’ not ‘get’. If I worked behind the counter of a shop and someone said “Can I get a bacon roll, please.” I’d be very tempted to say something like, “Sure, if you think you can reach from there.” It’s grammatically incorrect given the context of the relationship. The customer ‘getting’ their request would mean them stepping behind the counter and helping themselves.
Not really. There are a lot of ways to characterize the exchange that is taking place; and get doesn't only mean to physically grab something. You might say "I went to the bakery and got a loaf of bread" -- I don't think that's incorrect in BrE? The act of exchanging money for a good is just as much getting as the act of picking that good up with your hands. What is important is the act of exchange, in which ownership of the good is transferred. It's more symbolic, I suppose, but it's still getting. In fact, get is better than have. The use of have in this context implies a static relationship between the customer and the good, with no reference to the action which produced that relationship. Using get is a much better way of representing the dynamic economic exchange itself, in which something is actually gotten, rather than merely representing the result of that exchange, as have does. Have does not even necessarily imply that there has been a change of state. It is very possible, when you say "I have a muffin," that you have always had the muffin; perhaps there was no time at which you did not have the muffin. The use of get puts these ambiguities to rest by proclaiming that there was indeed a time, at some point in the past, when you did not have the muffin; and that you definitely did obtain the muffin through one of the means by which it is possible to do so--perhaps through barter, perhaps through theft, perhaps by mendicancy. This clarity is only one of the advantages of get over have in the context of purchasing a good. "Excuse me, can I have a muffin" completely bypasses any reference to the means that are to be used to produce the having of the muffin. One does not have a muffin for $3, one gets a muffin for $3. So, Sir, as you can clearly see, the American way (per usual) is superior, because it evokes a more complete picture of the relevant economic realities of exchange than have.
For twenty years, we got mail for the man who'd lived in our house thirty years earlier. We developed a friendly relationship with the guy after I finally called him and asked what he wanted us to do with stuff his old high school alumni association kept sending him since he couldn't convince them to change his address. He said if it had a real stamp, he'd come get it. He dropped by to pick up something one day, stayed to chat a moment, looked around the room with a smile, and said, "I always liked this house." We've met at least one member of every family who lived here over the last seven decades, including the guy who built the place (a friend's uncle) and the guys who did the plumbing and cabinet work.
My dad's landline phone number has the last two digits, transposed, of a local dentist. Over the years we got quite good at simply politely directing people to the correct number. Even the ones who asked us if we could just take down their appointment information and forward it to the dentist.
In one of my previous houses I used to get a Christmas card for a previous occupant every year. There was no personal message or reply address, so I just assumed that they weren't that good friends and the p.o just hadn't bothered to tell the sender that they'd moved until, after about ten years, the card arrived as usual with a message inside saying "great to see you the other day..." which made the "not telling we've moved" thing seem a bit more deliberate (c:
My folks landline is one prefixe digit off from the local hospital. My mother has had "you have not reached the hospital" in some form or another on their answering machine message for the last 20 years.
Pisses me off no end when amazon charge an extra £10 for the exact same item, just because you want it in the most popular colour! Is that even legal??
Years ago, my brother-in-law and I started a handyman business, and Michigan Bell (I said it was years ago) assigned us the telephone number of (517) XXX-XXXX. After we had had the number printed on flyers and business cards and included it in our Yellow Pages (years ago) ad, we discovered the same number, only with an (800) area code, was our area's AAA Emergency Roadside Assistance number. We did have a lot of fun fielding calls before we recorded a 'we're not AAA' answering machine (years ago) message.
Awwh, that's a heartwarming story. Alas the original owners are dead, so we just forward the mail to their daughter. Well could they at least give me the decency of informing me why I keep getting their mail?
A friend of the family used to get a lot of random obscene phone calls that she couldn't explain. Then one of her friends said, "Hey, did you know your phone number plays 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' when you dial it? That's so cute!" Eureka! Apparently, some folks just love drunk dialing children's songs. So she changed her phone number and never got an obscene call again.
Here’s my RaUT for the day: If I manually put my phone’s clock forward one hour, now (for the beginning of BST), will it automatically move it on another hour when the clocks go forward automatically, or will it know I’ve already done it?
My guess would be - it depends... on the blackberry* there are options to use system broadcast time, system broadcast timezone, or select your own. I have noticed that when you go abroad it seems to know where you are and what time it is, so it seems to work. I guess if you opt to set your own time you can set it to whatever you want, but in that case it can't/won't change for BST** *other phones are available, but why bother? **other STs are available, and you might get better weather, although at the moment it's very nice; I think it's the first time in my puff that I've worn shorts in Yorkshire in March!
Darwin took note of the great difficulty in using cats for studying genetics. Too slutty to get good data.
Well, I have it set to change automatically, but that still doesn’t tell me what I need to know. I’m guessing even with automatic time setting enabled I could still go ahead and set the time forward an hour. But then what happens on Sunday at 02:00 when BST kicks in? ETA: Well there we have it! I’m on iPhone and you can’t adjust the time if you’re on automatic.
