I often use the ‘International Phonetic Alphabet’ (which I got from an US Army web page years ago) when doing customer support (invariably the customer will use random proper names (George, Harry, Ike, Ray…), since they don’t know the alphabet.
I find I have to substitue something like Sandman for S, since many peope think ‘Ciera’.
There’s also a quite interesting list of phonetic alphabets from all over the world - for both Latin and non-Latin alphabets - here.
I never knew there were any other phonetis alphabets! I thought JohnnyLA’s version was the world standard (in English, at least). The words are unique-sounding; that is, there’s no other word in English that sounds like Alpha or Bravo or Foxtrot, so they are much clearer for identification. Except for Mike, but perhaps they couldn’t find a better word.
I picked it up as a kid when the cop show Juliet Bravo was on British TV. I love the way it sounds when a name or whatever is spelt out phonetically - ‘Quebec Uniform Echo Echo November Alpha Lima’ sounds almost poetic.
I used the exact same one in the Canadian military as well.
And, like GrizzRich, I can’t stand when people use everyday words:
Whoever needs my name on the phone: And could I get your name, sir?
Me: Aguecheek- Alpha, golf…
WNMNOTP: I’m sorry…?
Me: :sigh:…A like apple, g like girl, blah, blah, blah.
WNMNOTP: Oh! Okay, so that’s A-apple, g-girl…
My favorite phonetic phrase so far is “Whiskey tango foxtrot, over?” which was a popular phrase with a group of old friends, meaning (of course) “what the fuck?”
Amazing the things you do to avoid swearing in contexts where swearing is verboten.
I’ve always used the one that Johnny LA spelled out. So to speak.
We pretty much use it here (at my workplace) for travel locator codes - but then again, when I am spelling out someone’s name, I’ll say "a, alpha, b bite me, c charlie etc. My travel dept. loves me! They say I crack 'em up…
I use it in Ham Radio.
Learned the Alpha-Bravo-Charlie version when my sister was in the USAF in the early 70s, and used it when I worked in the travel industry. So many customers asked, “Hey, are you a pilot?”
When I hear “WTF” I think of a cheezy radio jingle:
“Double-U Tee Eff Oh!
Cincinatti!”
Mine will always be India Delta 10 Tango.
[brown-nose voice on]Wow, sir, you must be a REAL India Delta 10 Tango if you can’t figure out that piece of gear is Tango Uniform![/brown-nose voice off]
I use it every day as well. And Johnny Lima Alpha 
put down the one that I use.
I used this a bit when I was doing a job that involved overseeing a lot of corporate travel. It was very handy for the multitudes of reservations numbers that you need for airlines, car rentals, and hotels. Also, the destinations were outside of the US, so I was spelling just about everything.
However, one thing I noticed is that “hotel” is not a great word for “H” when you are talking about travel, because as soon as I would say “hotel”, the caller would ask “what about the hotel?” I should also add that by the time these callers were actually talking to me, it was usually because something was screwed up with their arrangements, so they were a little keyed up about hotel issues to begin with. The worst part was that my own office was in “H wing” (I will also add this is the worst name for a wing ever, because people always try to find the eigth wing) so when I was giving people directions to come see me in person, we were back at the “hotel” problem. One of my co-workers suggested just using a different H word for H (with apologies to all the people above who find it annoying, I agree but I had reached the end of my rope with “hotel”). I decided to go for it, but on the next call, when the time came to say “H,” my mind just went blank and the only “H” word I could think of was “Hammerhead shark.” My co-workers have never let me live this one down, and started calling my office the “hammerhead shark suite.”
I learned this as a kid just for the hell of it - and it’s come in handy since I work in the travel industry. I’ve always heard the one Johnny LA wrote, but sometimes people will change a few of the letters (e.g. A = “apple” or “able”)
I’ve always been impressed with the foresight of whoever came up with that phonetic alphabet - the words are so international. They mostly seem to be borrowed directly from Latin or Greek (making them easily accessible to a great many nationalities) or accepted international words (Foxtrot, Whisky). Perhaps nowadays though, “C” could be “Coca-Cola” ? 
If I ever start a hotel it’s going to be called the Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel. We’ll have a putt-putt course in the courtyard so people don’t get upset at us for not being a golf hotel. And we’ll put up a big neon sign spelling out the words that will be so long and use so much light that it will negate the need for street lamps in our parking lots.
My first exposure (perhaps oddly, since my dad was a Naval officer and later in the FAA) was from Adam-12. They’d check license plates and say things like “Ida Nora Ocean”. I heard “Able Baker Charlie” from comic books. But I never learned that one. The only one I’ve ever used is the one I posted earlier.
racinchikki - your post cracked me up. You need to write a book!
Regarding the phonetic alphabet - I remember seeing in the manual for a really old flight sim game that fighter pilots refer to a particularly good pilot as “sierra hotel” - “SH” or “sh*t hot”. Given the source, I’ve no idea if that’s true or not.