Steven P. McNicoll wrote:

Why does ATC need some slack in this case? Ground control knew he was IFR,
that controller issued an IFR clearance and taxi instructions to the OP.
Presumably the ground controller passes a flight strip to the local
controller on all departures that shows the aircraft to be IFR or VFR. This
is about as basic as it gets in ATC, there's no excuse for this error and
certainly no excuse for compounding it by asking the OP to squawk VFR after
departure.


I agree no excuse, but do the so-called VFR towers have strips?
The ones I used to visit didn't use to have printers and didn't
seem to use them for VFR ground movements. The Oshkosh tower
sup was even lamenting to me that they FAA took away the printer
after the airshow each year.