Originally Posted by
GunshipGuy
I had one a few months ago on the south side where I was left wondering...."Did she send me to tower?" Ground controller said, "Delta XXXX, before I let you go....." (forget what it was, but I complied or took the info) and I thought..." 'Before I let you go????' Does that mean she wanted to me to go to tower when she was done?" So, like an idiot who at that point didn't have his sequence, I go to tower waiting and then I get from tower, "Delta XXXX, switch over to 121.75."
Perplexed and slightly annoyed, but nice female ground controller, "Delta XXXX, I didn't give you your sequence (i.e. WhyTF would you switch over?). You're after the company 75 holding short of mike 2, switch to tower 123.85." I felt an excuse was in order, "I was thrown off by your comment "Before I let you go..." I didn't mean to come across as a tool, but you never know. Didn't get any pushback on that, so hopefully not.
I guarantee you not, from ATC's perspective anyway. It's for reasons like this that we are constantly reminded to only use standard phraseology, otherwise we're taught different pilots will interpret it differently. We don't like unpredictable results, so it's good you told her what confused you. Hopefully for her it was a lesson learned.
Also, with your situation and the original pilot's outburst -- I think I can speak for my fellow controllers and say we don't think anything of it at all. We take 10x the s--t talk from each other so this kind of stuff is only funny. We're not out to violate you, just trying to move things along. I bet the most this original controller did was turn to the local/tower guy and say this Delta hasn't had his coffee yet, look out. Then he completely forgot about it (until all this).