Let me join Uber in pedants’ corner for a bit (and hope I got the apostrophe right).
People should be banned from using the phrase ‘I’ll have a panini please’ because you can’t have one panini. That would be a panino. You can have two or more panini with my best wishes. Many of the people who own and serve in the fake coffee places that serve these overpriced and pale imitations of the Italian sandwich like snack are equally ignorant, as their signage demonstrates.
So once retired, I plan to kill two birds with one stone and take part time jobs in multiple Costa/Nero/Starbucks like places, and whenever I am asked for ‘a panini’ will take one of three courses:
- loudly, tediously and bombastically correct the Italian grammar of the customer
- courteously serve 8 panini and charge for them, explaining that I heard ‘panini’ and misheard the ‘a’ for eight
- simply refuse to serve them, shouting that their request doesn’t make sense
Hopefully I can drive a few of these purveyors of scalding milky water out of business with my customer centric approach.
It’s only panini that winds me up, not the similar errors made for espresso and cappuccino. Not sure why that is.
