Retirement cards have a house style and it is terrible. "Enjoy the golf." "Put your feet up." "You've earned the rest." "You'll be bored within a month." Somebody gives thirty years to a place and gets handed a card that talks entirely about sitting down.
The problem with those lines is the same in each case. They describe an absence. They are about the work stopping rather than the person continuing, and every one assumes a version of retirement you have not checked: the deckchair, the garden, the caravan, the eighteen holes. You do not know what they are retiring into. You do know what they were like at work. Write that.
It is also where people go wrong by treating a retirement card like a leaving card. A leaving card is for someone going to another desk somewhere else, so it can be all about what is next. A retirement card is for someone leaving the whole thing behind, and pointing forward is exactly where the clichés come from, because nobody in the office knows what next looks like. Point backwards. Backwards is where the material is.
The move that replaces every cliché
Two sentences. One specific thing they did, one true thing about what they were like. Then stop.
It works for a person you sat next to for a decade and for someone you passed in the corridor, because specificity scales down better than sentiment does. "Thanks for everything" says nothing at any length. "You were the only person in that building who answered the phone before three rings" says something in one.
Lines to retire, and what to write instead
- "Enjoy the golf." You are guessing at their weekends. Guess at nothing and name something you watched them do. "You covered for the rest of us for years. Pick the next thing purely for yourself."
- "Put your feet up." Make the time theirs rather than empty. "Thirty years of your time went to this place. The rest of it is finally yours to spend."
- "You've earned the rest." Safe only where rest is the thing they actually want. Check before you assume it. "You have earned whatever you want next, including nothing, including something completely daft."
- "It's the end of an era." True and empty. Name the era. "The era of you knowing where every file was kept ends today, and we are all quietly terrified."
- "All the best, [name]." The card equivalent of a nod. One clause fixes it. "All the best. You made this a place people wanted to come to."
For a close colleague
The person you actually worked with. This one can be funny, because you have earned it.
- "Twenty years of you, and I still cannot believe they paid you to be that entertaining. I would do the lot again."
- "You taught me more in one bad week than my entire first year here. I will be quoting you at people for the rest of my career, uncredited."
- "You made a job I did not always like into a place I wanted to be. That is not a small thing and I will not shrink it."
For someone you barely worked with
The card comes round, you have spoken to them maybe six times, and it is on somebody else's desk in a minute. The instinct is to write a friendship that never existed. Resist it. One small true thing lands; an invented history does not.
- "I never got to work on anything with you, but I have heard your name in about forty meetings and always in the same approving tone. Have a brilliant time being unreachable."
- "I have been here two years, you have been here twenty-eight, and you never once made me feel like the new one. Thank you for that."
If passing the card round is your job, ask people for one thing they remember rather than a signature. Whoever has known them longest should get the last page.
For a boss
Warmth plus respect, without turning it into a performance review.
- "You backed me on the thing everyone else thought was a mistake. I have not forgotten it, and I never will."
- "A career of decisions, and the ones people still bring up are the ones where you took the hit for somebody junior."
- "You leave behind a team that likes each other, which is the hardest thing on the list and the one nobody puts on a CV."
For a parent
A different card entirely, usually written by someone who spent a childhood watching that job take the evenings and the weekends.
- "You have been going to work since before I existed. Whatever you do with Monday mornings now, you have earned the right to choose."
- "Every hard thing I know how to do, I learned from watching you go in on days you clearly did not want to. Thank you. Now stop."
- "Forty years and I never heard you moan about it once, which frankly I would have. Enormously proud of you, if that is allowed upwards."
For early retirement
If they chose it and they are pleased, match the mood. The risk is a card that reads as faintly suspicious of the decision, or envious in a way that turns into a comment.
- "Going early and going happy. Absolutely no notes, and slight fury on my part."
- "You worked out what the time was worth before the rest of us did. Spend it accordingly."
For a retirement nobody chose
Sometimes the word "retirement" is covering a restructure, ill health, or a decision made above them. The room usually knows, and the card that pretends otherwise is the one that stings.
You do not have to name it. You do have to avoid celebrating something they did not want. Congratulations is the wrong word and enthusiasm is the wrong register. Write appreciation, in the past tense, and keep it short.
- "Not how you would have chosen to finish, and I am sorry about that. What you built here is real and it is staying."
- "Not going to pretend today is a celebration. I will say I learned more from you than anyone else here, and that you can ring me whenever you like."
A card that actually looks like them
A shop card with a golf ball on it does the exact thing this article argues against, which is hand somebody a stereotype on their last day.
With The Card Genie you upload one photo and describe the scene you want, and the genie paints them into it. Thirty years of running the place, drawn as thirty years of running the place. The in-joke the team has had since 2015, finally made real. It goes to their phone by WhatsApp, email or a link, so everyone can see it wherever they are, and you get a free watermarked preview, so nothing is a surprise when you send it. An image card is £1.79 and a short animated one with sound is £3.49. There is a £4.49 print add-on as well, which comes to you in a blank envelope rather than to them, if you would rather hand something over than send it.
Make a retirement card, or browse occasions for whatever the genie handles next.
FAQs
What is the difference between a leaving card and a retirement card?
A leaving card is for somebody moving to another job, so it can look forward at the new role. A retirement card is for somebody leaving work altogether, and there is no new job to point at, which is why so many fall back on golf and deckchairs. Write about the career instead.
What do you write in a retirement card for someone you barely worked with?
Something small and honest. Name one real thing, even if it is minor, like how they were with new starters or the fact they always said hello properly. A friendship you invent for the occasion reads as filler, and somebody working through forty messages in an afternoon will spot it.
Do you say congratulations in a retirement card?
Usually yes, if they are pleased about it. Not if the retirement was forced by a restructure or by ill health, because congratulating somebody on something they did not choose lands badly. In that case switch to thanks in the past tense and drop the celebratory tone.
How long should a retirement card message be?
Two sentences. A long career tempts people into trying to cover it, and the result reads like an employment record. What gets kept is the line that made them laugh and the line that proved somebody noticed.