I got my commercial with an instructor who hated "with you." He would force you to buy him a piece of carrot cake after the lesson if he caught you saying it. Interesting training technique...

Here's another way to reduce radio clutter: When you first contact approach, and he says something like, "squawk 4266 and ident," most pilots will reply by saying, "squawk 4266 and ident," then they enter the code and push the ident button. I do not read back the instruction. I leave the radio alone, and simply put in the code and hit the ident button on the transponder. The controller gets what he needed out of me, and the radio time is left available for someone else to use.