There is a particular awkwardness to a retirement do: a card roughly the size of a table mat, thirty signatures, a buffet nobody starts, and everyone trying to be funny without being rude. The safe ground is broad, though — the eight o’clock meeting that could have been an email, the printer, the alarm clock that will never go off again, and the sheer luxury of a free Wednesday morning. The ground to keep off is narrower and worth naming out loud: jokes about age, and anything hinting that the place will manage perfectly well now. Everything below stays on the right side of that line. Take any of it as it stands, and add the one detail — the mug, the drawer, the phrase they always used — that makes it obviously about them.
Funny retirement messages for a colleague
Congratulations on the retirement. You are now the only person in this building who does not have to pretend the new system is an improvement, and I hope you enjoy that thoroughly.
Your last day, and the printer has chosen this morning to work perfectly. It knows. Have a brilliant send-off, and do not look back at the inbox.
After all these years you are free of the eight o’clock meeting that could have been an email. That alone is worth a party. Enjoy every minute of it.
You are off, and we are left with your desk drawer, which contains four highlighters, a fork and something none of us is willing to identify. Have a wonderful retirement. The fork stays with us.
Retirement means never again explaining to anyone why the file is called final version seven. Go and have the time of your life.
It is a strange feeling, knowing you will be doing something enjoyable on a Wednesday morning while the rest of us sit on a call about a call. Enjoy it on our behalf.
Best of luck with the retirement. You will find the mornings much improved, the traffic irrelevant and your phone unusually quiet. All three come highly recommended.
What to write for a boss who is retiring
Congratulations. You have spent years telling us to think about the bigger picture, and from now on the bigger picture is entirely yours and the diary is empty. Make the most of it.
It takes a particular skill to run a team without ever raising your voice. We never worked out how you did it and we are not going to now. Have a brilliant retirement.
You always said you would go once the handover was done. The handover is done, the folders are finally named properly, and you have run clean out of excuses. Off you go.
Your leaving brings an end to the phrase quick catch-up, which was never once, in living memory, quick. We will miss you enormously. The phrase we will not miss at all.
Congratulations on the retirement. You are now free to have an opinion about the budget without anybody writing it down. Enjoy that more than is strictly decent.
Enjoy every bit of this — and enjoy being the person who turns the phone off at four o’clock and explains it to nobody.
You have signed off more forms than any one person should have to read. From here on the only thing you sign is a birthday card, and only if you fancy it. Have a great send-off.
Retirement wishes from the whole team
From all of us: thank you for the years, the patience and the biscuits nobody was supposed to know about. Enjoy the retirement, and be warned that we will ring you the first time something breaks.
The whole team wanted to sign something clever. What we have settled on is this — the place will be duller, the tea will be worse, and we are delighted for you anyway.
There has been a whip-round and a very long argument about the wording. The wording is: go and enjoy yourself, entirely and without guilt. The whip-round is in the envelope.
On behalf of everybody here: you have held this together for a very long time, largely by refusing to panic. Take that talent somewhere it can be used on holidays and gardens instead.
We are told it is traditional to say the door is always open. It is, and please do not use it. You have far better things on.
From the team, with thanks, with genuine affection, and with the firm understanding that you are never to be asked about a password again.
All of us have signed this, some of us twice, because the pen ran out halfway. Have a brilliant retirement and enjoy every single Monday from here on.
Short lines for the card everybody signs
Enjoy the freedom, ignore the alarm clock, and do not let anybody hand you a schedule.
Congratulations. The commute is over and the good part starts on Monday.
Thank you for everything, and good luck with all that free time. I am told it fills up alarmingly fast.
Wishing you a retirement full of the things you kept putting off. Start with the daft ones.
You have earned this. Go and be gloriously unavailable.
All the best. May your kettle be nearer than your keyboard ever was.
Enjoy it. And if anybody from here rings you, you are entirely within your rights not to answer.
Good luck out there. Apparently it is very strange for a fortnight and marvellous after that.
Thank you for making this place bearable on the worst days. Have a brilliant retirement.
Off you go, then. Send a postcard, but only if you feel like it.
Wishing you long mornings, short queues and absolutely no meetings.
Funny retirement one-liners for a text or a gift tag
Congratulations. Your calendar is a blank page now and it is staying that way.
Enjoy the retirement, and enjoy owning your own diary again.
No more alarms, no more agendas, no more circling back.
Here is to a retirement with no reply-all in it anywhere.
Go well. The kettle is yours now, all day, every day.
Best of luck out there, and the worst of luck to anybody who tries to book you.
Well done. From now on the rush hour is somebody else’s problem entirely.
Enjoy every Monday from here on. They are the good ones.
May your inbox never find you again.
Congratulations on your last ever handover.
Off into the wild. Take the good mug with you.
Wishing you a retirement measured in walks rather than meetings.
You are free. Use it recklessly.
All the best — and remember, nobody can put anything in your diary now.
For a teacher or a nurse finishing up
After all these years of bells, marking and other people’s timetables, the day is finally your own. Enjoy the retirement, and enjoy an autumn term that means nothing whatsoever to you.
You have spent a career explaining things patiently to people who were not listening. Congratulations: from now on you may explain nothing to nobody. Have a wonderful retirement.
Congratulations on the retirement. You will never again have to find a working pen at thirty seconds’ notice, and that alone deserves celebrating properly.
Enjoy the retirement, and enjoy drinking a hot drink while it is still, in fact, hot. We are reliably informed that this is the single biggest change.
You have handed out more good advice than anybody could count, most of it while doing three other things at once. Go and be idle at your leisure. You have had precious little practice.
Best wishes on retiring. No more nights, no more rotas, and no more being the only person who knows where anything is kept.
Thank you for years of doing a hard job well and making it look ordinary. Now go and do absolutely nothing well, and make that look ordinary too.
A few words to say at the send-off
I will keep this short, because we have all seen what happens when somebody does not. In all the years we have worked together I have never once seen you flustered, and I have tested that theory harder than most. To a colleague who made this place work, and who from tomorrow is nobody’s problem but their own. Cheers.
Two minutes, no more. Everybody in this room has a story about being rescued by the person we are sending off, and most of those stories end with them saying it was nothing. It was not nothing. Raise your glasses: to a proper career, and to the far better part that starts tomorrow.
A few words, and then the buffet. It has often been said that nobody is irreplaceable. Whoever said that never tried to replace this one — we have looked, and it has taken three of us. Enjoy the retirement, enjoy the lie-ins, and enjoy never seeing this room again. Cheers.
I was asked to say something funny and something true. The funny part: you have never, in all these years, made a round of tea. The true part: you have made up for it in every other way there is. To a brilliant colleague and a very well-earned retirement.
Glasses up, please. There are people who do the job and people who hold the place together, and we have been lucky enough to have one of each in the same person. Go and enjoy every minute of it, and do not you dare check your emails. Cheers.
Questions and answers
How far can the humour go in a retirement card before it stops being funny?
The reliable material is the work itself and the freedom that follows: the meetings, the software, the commute, the alarm clock, the printer. That is shared ground and everybody in the room has suffered it. The two areas to leave alone are age and usefulness. A joke about slowing down turns a send-off into a comment on how old somebody is, and a joke about the place coping fine without them lands as relief that they are going, which is never what you meant. If you are unsure about a line, imagine it read out to the whole room by somebody else, because on the day that is very often what happens.
They are not remotely pleased about retiring. Does a funny card still work?
It does, but the jokes have to be about the job rather than about stopping. Anything that celebrates the ending reads as celebrating their going, which is the last thing somebody in that position wants to open in front of a room. The printer, the software and the eight o’clock meeting are all still fair game, because those are shared complaints and nothing to do with them leaving. The phrase to strike out on sight is enjoy the rest: rest implies they were worn out and needed removing, when what they want to hear is that the time is now their own. Write the thanks plainly, keep one light line, and leave the future vague rather than filling it in on their behalf.
There is no send-off — they are finishing from home and the team is scattered. How do you mark it?
Something has to arrive on the last day, because otherwise the day passes with nothing at all, which is far worse than a small gesture badly organised. A digital card everybody signs does the job, but it needs one person chasing it: with no physical card going round the desks, half the team simply forgets. Set the deadline a few days early and send one reminder. Ask for a sentence each rather than a name, since a screen full of signatures is only a list. If there is a call, keep it short and nominate somebody to speak first, or everyone waits politely for somebody else to start. A card posted to the house afterwards is worth more than anything on a screen.
Do you tell them you will miss them, or does that only make it harder?
Say it, but say it once and keep it small. On a card that thirty people are signing, one plain line carries much further than a paragraph, and it is the sentence people quote back years later. What tips it over is repetition and scale: a whole card of how will we ever cope turns a send-off into a wake, and it edges towards suggesting they are abandoning everybody. Put that line in the middle rather than at the end, and finish on something forward-looking or funny, so the last thing they read is not a loss. And if you genuinely will not miss them, write about the work instead. Nobody is owed a lie in ink.
When do you hand over the card — on the last day or at the do?
Whichever comes later, so the card is not sitting in a drawer while everybody is still saying goodbye. If the send-off falls on the last day, the card goes with the speech and the gift. If the do is a week afterwards, hold on to it: a card given on the day someone leaves gets read in a rush among twenty others, while one given at the gathering gets read properly and taken home. Whoever is organising it should collect signatures well in advance and chase the people who are away, because the person most likely to be missed off is the one working from home that week.