FCUX
The reason you are meant to add degrees is: in the event of poor reception, speaker turned tooo low, partially blocked transmissin, that you only hear the ....270. Then you happen to be climbing to 250 but your final is 290 so you set 270 read it back, busy controler hears what he expects and presto there you are. Unfourtunately some of these things were implimented for all the right reasons. Tenireef (man I bet I spelled that wrong) is an example, as are the numerous runway incursions of late.
Yes Chicago does get a little stroppy but not too bad. I was actually basaed there and as a foreign carrier you can tell they slow down when they talk to us which we appreciate !!! Some of what we have to say is in the manual so you have to blame those in management.
However cannot explaiin fully ready !