I agree wholeheartedly, superfluous, non-standard babble has no place in aviation.
"Pending clearance" must take a whole second to say.
On the other hand, the following;
Smartstate 542: Centre, SS542 departed blah blah, climbing FL250
ATC: SS542 remain OCTA
Smartstate 542: Remain OCTA
..........takes another 5 to 8 secs.
If the offending airline has been involved in the above multi-transmission exchange on several occasions, then the offending pilot may merely be attempting to communicate his SA/need for a clearance to the ATCO.
I've heard this on plenty of occasions and can understand how some have slipped it into their RT.
There was a thread on this recently. At the end of the day does it really matter as long as we are getting our message across???
And no, I rarely use the "pending" bit unless the departure port is in close proximity to the CTA LL.