Barefoot Contessas of Good Manners

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Milliyet Newspaper, 10 November 2017)


                                   Exemplary

Ruhiye Güngör (64) lives alone and works in a spinach field in Ankara's
Beypazarı district.  Ruhiye hanım went to the bank to withdraw her
retirement salary but since she had come straight from the spinach
field her plastic shoes were muddy.  So Ruhiye hanım took off her shoes
outside the bank and entered in her socks.

Bank workers noticed Ruhiye hanım's gesture, took photos and put the
news on social media.  Ruhiye hanım, who earns 50 TL (about $15) per
day in the spinich field, had this to say: "When I went to the bank to
withdraw the retirement salary left to me by my late husband, who died
7 years ago, I took off my shoes because they were muddy, thinking
that one does not enter a bank with muddy shoes.  I went in with my
socks and noone said anything.  With my late husband's salary, I'm
helping my son pay his debts related to the home he bought."



                  Good manners immortalized.

This thoughtful gesture by Ruhiye hanım brought to mind a similar
incident that occurred last year in Kırıkkale's Sulakyurt district. 
Şerife Cesur (84) took off her shoes before entering a hospital's
emergency room, prompting the hospital to change its name to
'Şerife Cesur District State Hospital'. (!)  Also, in 2014 after the
Soma mine tragedy, the injured Murat Yalçın took off his boots
rather than soil the gurney in the ambulance.  Last month in
Zonguldak, a group of miners wouldn't sit on the seats in a bus
because of their dirty clothes.