Retirement · The retiree · Warm · about 2.5 minutes
Retirement Thank You Speech From the Retiree (3 Minutes)
A crew supervisor giving his own thank-you speech at his retirement party in the union hall; he wanted to thank people with reasons, not a list, and get through the family part without falling apart.
Given by Warren, retiring after thirty-one years with the city water department. 353 words. The names are made up.
The toast
Thank you. Thank you all for coming, and thank you to Wilma for putting this together, and for not listening when I said a sheet cake in the break room would do.
I started with the water department thirty-one years ago, digging. I'm finishing as a crew supervisor, and the truth is I'm still mostly digging. If you've ever turned on a tap in this town and something came out, there's a decent chance somebody in this room was standing in a hole at three in the morning to make that happen.
I want to thank a few of them.
Wilma has been our dispatcher for twenty years. When a main breaks, Wilma is the voice on the radio that tells you where it is, who's already there, and that she's called your wife to say you'll be late. She has never once been wrong about an address. She's been wrong about the weather plenty.
Giorgio, my partner on the truck for most of the last fifteen years. We've spent more hours together in that cab than either of us has spent with our families, and we ran out of things to talk about sometime around year three. He still laughs at the same three stories. That's friendship.
To the younger crew, who learned to do it right while I stood there pointing. You're better than we were. Don't tell the old guys I said that.
And to my family. My wife, who heard that phone ring in the middle of the night more times than either of us wants to know, and always said the same thing as I went out the door: "Wear the hat." And my kids, who grew up thinking it was normal for Dad to show up at the school play with mud up to his knees. It isn't normal. Thank you for never minding.
I've spent thirty-one years trying to keep the water where it belongs. I'm going to spend the next while at the lake, where the water can do whatever it wants.
So everybody, please raise a glass. To the crew. Keep the taps on.
Why it works: He names only two coworkers and gives each a specific reason, then thanks everyone else as a group. The family comes last, right before the toast, and the water at the lake calls back to the work without a single line about time off.
Make it yours
Borrow the shape, not the lines. Put your own people, your own year and your own detail in each spot, or answer a few questions and get a first draft built from them.