{"id":9650,"date":"2015-01-28T17:54:18","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T22:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9650"},"modified":"2015-01-28T17:54:18","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T22:54:18","slug":"bmo-employee-lives-life-by-the-golden-rule-and-customers-show-their-appreciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/bmo-employee-lives-life-by-the-golden-rule-and-customers-show-their-appreciation\/","title":{"rendered":"BMO employee lives life by the Golden Rule \u2013 and customers show their appreciation"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDear Miss Marie,\u201d wrote one eight year old customer, to BMO\u2019s Marie De Souza. \u201cYou are a really nice person and you are very special to me\u2026 thank you for being so nice to me in letting me use the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

This customer is much more than that to Ms. De Souza. He is family \u2013 and it was indeed a family reunion at the Bank of Montreal\u2019s Yonge and Wellington Branch this month as the bank bade farewell to her, their Financial Services Coordinator, who is retiring after nearly 20 years at that location.<\/p>\n

As the day went on, customers coming into the bank were almost evenly split \u2013 some were coming in to deposit a cheque or make a withdrawal but, more often than not, they were coming in bearing flowers, cards, and other tokens for Ms. De Souza.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have worked with Marie at this branch for 15 years and Marie is BMO in our clients\u2019 eyes,\u201d said Maureen Farrell, after Ms. De Souza received a congratulatory certificate from Mayor Geoff Dawe. \u201cThis position is ideal because she is the face of BMO and the clients just think she is God. It is her smile, her demeanour, and they just love her.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe just really cares about people, she is their counsellor in that they will come in and tell her anything, and she is like a mother to everyone.\u201d
\nThis is a sentiment shared by Ms. De Souza herself, who helmed her desk for the last time on January 16.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a family I am going to be leaving,\u201d she said. \u201cThese people are not just customers. I have been with them through their joys, their sorrows. I have seen their babies have babies, and I have made myself honourary mother to a lot of these customers here and it is going to be sad for me to leave them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, all good things must come to an end. With her husband retired for the last three years, she decided it was the right time to spend some time together because \u201cyou never know what is in the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

As countless members of her BMO \u201cfamily\u201d came in for a hug and a chat, Ms. De Souza\u2019s son Chris, a Police Constable at Queen\u2019s Park, looked on proudly and summed up his feelings in a way that was particularly apt for his profession: \u201cShe has been granted parole for good behaviour, so she is going to enjoy herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are a lot of people that really take to her and actually really like the service she has provided for the years she has been here,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it is going to be emotional because it is something she gets up and does every day, she does it very well, and she is happy to do it. Just by seeing how many people are coming in and taking time out of their day just to say thank you, people who don\u2019t actually have official business here, it is very powerful and empowering after all the work she has done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marie and her family came to Canada from Jamaica over 30 years ago. After they arrived, she was encouraged by a friend working in the banking industry to just give it a try. After 10 years working in Downtown Toronto, she spent two years working at the BMO branch on Yonge Street at Mulock Drive, before beginning her 18 year tenure at Yonge and Wellington. <\/p>\n

When asked what her key was in making such a connection with her customers-cum-family, Ms. De Souza says a very simple formula was handed down to her by her mother.
\n\u201cShe always told me growing up that we should always treat people as we like to be treated and I have lived my life by that,\u201d she said. \u201cWhether you have $1 or $10 million, you need to be treated with respect. If we could all just take the time to see the other person and be mindful of them, it would be a nice world to live in.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe also said if we smile, then the world will smile with you, but if we cry we cry alone. When people come in on some days, they might not be feeling great and they\u2019ll ask, \u2018So what is so great about today?\u2019 Because you got up today. You lived to see another day. That changes their whole attitude. Sometimes if they come in frowning, I just point at them and they smile because they know what is coming next.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDear Miss Marie,\u201d wrote one eight year old customer, to BMO\u2019s Marie De Souza. \u201cYou are a really nice person and you are very special to me\u2026 thank you for being so nice to me in letting me use the bathroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

This customer is much…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-22-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2vE","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 15:50:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}