Inaccurate Speech In A Medium-Sized Grocer’s

I looked up ‘wont’ in my dictionary and it means ‘custom.’ Thankfully, it appears I used it correctly in my last post, so that’s a relief.

I was amused to hear a young chap break off from his mobile phone call in the Sainsbury’s Local across the road and ask the cashier “Can I get 20 Benson & Hedges?” My understanding is that that request is normally reserved for transactions in coffee shops.

Anyway, the cashier said yes, but then picked up the cigarettes himself, which, strictly and accurately speaking, is not what the young mobile phone chap asked.

The young mobile phone chap was asking if it was physically possible for himself to take a packet of 20 Benson & Hedges from the shelf.

The only honest reply from the cashier should have been “In theory, yes, but it is company policy to discourage customers from walking behind the counter.”

Ideally, the customer should have asked, “Please may I have 20 Benson & Hedges?” But I imagine he would not have found that sufficiently cool to impress the person at the other end of his telephone call.

So he had to use a form of words he has probably heard in the TV programme Friends. It probably made him feel a little bit like Chandler Bing, but more sexually successful.

In a way I pity him, but in another way I despise him.

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