WHAT ARE WE MISSING IN 2018?

    This morning I rushed to get ready for a 9 am tire rotation appointment. Even though I know where this business is, I used my GPS so I would be able to do some "noticing" as I drove. 
FIRST:
    I know when cities number streets, they get themselves in a pickle...instead of saying 198 (1), 198 (2), 198 (3)...which is confusing, they use PLACE, AVENUE, STREET, BOULEVARD, etc., all with the same number.
    Once a lady from Bellevue was trying to find my home, which is on a PLACE. I don't think she had a GPS. She called me from the STREET with the same number as mine. I went to find her, and she was just around the corner from my PLACE! 
  
SECOND:
    As I walked into the tire store, a young man was talking to a sales clerk. As I sat down to wait for my car, I couldn't help but overhear the conversation. The salesman was trying to talk about mileage for certain tires, prices, specifications, and more. He spoke quickly.
    The young man was from another country, but spoke fairly good English. His vocabulary and understanding of technical tire terms, however, was a bit lacking. He had been reading the signs in the store, but wasn't quite sure what they meant. Both he and the clerk were getting a little frustrated, not about the price of tires nor the warranties, but simply about language. I'm not sure they understood what their problem really was.
     I remember my first foray to a market in Bangkok with a visitor from America. I had been in language school just a couple weeks. My friend said, "Let's go buy some bananas over there." I looked at the Thai woman selling fruit and asked in my very best Thai, "Gluay nii towrie?"  How much are these bananas?  She told me, and I tried what I had learned in school:  "Lote, dai mai?" Can you sell it for less?
     In an instant I knew I was in trouble, as the woman began telling me why she wasn't able to do that---so fast I could never keep up. I knew she was speaking Thai, and I recognized the sounds, but not the words. I turned to my friend and said, "Let's get out of here!" 
     In order to fix our communication issues, no matter what the cause, we might benefit from SLOWING DOWN to LISTEN and SPEAK...putting away all our ASSUMPTIONS of people and language...and asking each other for HELP!

WHAT HAVE YOU NOTICED ALREADY TODAY?