Fresh ears bring relief to our Montecarlo neighborhood

Leadership consultants recommend that organizations need fresh eyes in order to see things that longtime employees have been living with for so long that they don’t even notice.                                                                                                                                        

In our case it took fresh ears to make an improvement in our Montecarlo neighborhood. We have a bank right across the street from our house, and its bancomat has emitted loud piercing beeps whenever anyone uses it, 24 hours a day. It sometimes wakes people sleeping in our east bedroom and is a mild but persistent source of annoyance in our living/dining room.

We accepted it as part of the neighborhood. It’s the only bank in town, and it is convenient to have a bank machine so close. Visiting son-in-law Dan just happened to walk by while one of the bank managers was locking up at the end of the day. “I asked him if he worked there,” Dan said, “and he didn’t really understand my English, so I pointed and asked again. When he said he did, I pointed to the bank machine and said it was really loud, covering my ears and making a pained expression, and then pointing to our bedroom. He just smiled and walked away.” A few days later, Dan saw a female employee coming out of the bank, and he repeated his sign-language message.

We thought nothing of it, until we realized a few days later that customers were using the bancomat—and we no longer heard the annoying high-pitched beeps, and we haven’t heard any since. Jesus once said, “You have not because you ask not,” but I never once thought of applying that to the bancomat. Nor, apparently, did any of our neighbors, all of whom could have made the same request in easy to understand Italian. It just took some fresh ears—and the gentilezza of the management of the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca—for our own tired ears to gain welcome relief.