Category Archives: Helpful Hints

A pretty interesting thing happened to us yesterday.  As we were driving back to Praiano from Pompei, the Amalfi coast road was closed due to falling rock.  Apparently the intense rain storms we had loosened the ground enough that some rocks tumbled down the cliffs and onto someone’s windshield.  Talk about ruining a vacation!  Anyway, we ran into a police roadblock in a little town called Piano di Sorrento.  The police were busy yelling atchatting with all of us who had climbed out of our cars and were trying figure out what was going on.  At some point, he got tired of the verbal abuse (and Italian is SUCH a great language for this) he was receiving for delaying everyone’s trip and told us “due minuti” – two minutes.  A big cheer arose , we climbed back in our cars, and hurdled forward down the narrow road.

In another due minuti, we ran smack into another cop who was at the pile where the rocks had indeed fallen.  Two guys were climbing up a pretty steep hill to inspect the state of the remaining rocks and no one was passing.  We ended up going back almost to Pompei and taking another route home and as of this morning the road still isn’t open.  Only two hours delay.  Non che problema.

I write this because clearly the first cop decided it wasn’t his job to get abused so he’d pass the Euro on to the next guy.  The only one whose situation he fixed was his own.  You may have thought he was trying to be helpful but he wasn’t.  Any cops like this in your business?