Last night I did my first bit of grocery shopping since Padma left. Despite queueing in one of those "10 items or less" lanes, with all those 'Lesses' in front of me, it seemed to take forever before I got to the cashier who was clearly stressed out. As I fumbled with my card, she sternly said, "Strip down, facing me".
I was surprised but did exactly as I was told (bear in mind, I'm German-born and -bred). After all the shrieking and the alarms had died down, I discovered that she had been talking about the card reader.
After all that, I thought I had better not push my luck by telling her that "less" should only be used with grammatically singular nouns and that "fewer" should be used with nouns for countable objects instead (as any ex-Scots College boy would know; right, Andrew? ☺)
