Funny Retirement Speech for a Coworker (About 3 Minutes)

The toast

Hi, everybody. I'm Russ. I've worked the service desk about fifteen feet from Rudy's parts counter for twelve years, which is long enough to know that if you want to talk to Rudy, you'd better call him, even if you can see him.

Because Rudy answers the phone the same way every single time. You've all heard it. "Parts. This is Rudy. What did you break?" He says it to customers. He says it to the owner. He said it to his own mother once, and she told me about it at the holiday party.

Rudy has worked that counter for thirty-three years. In that time, this dealership has bought three different computer systems for looking up parts. Rudy has used none of them. He has a filing system, and the filing system is Rudy. You give him a year and a model, and he's already walking to the back before you finish the sentence. He's wrong about once a year, and when he is, he takes it personally for a week.

He also has a radio on that counter that gets exactly one station. I've asked him about the station. He says it's the only one that plays real music. I have heard the same song come out of that radio at least four thousand times.

Now here's the part I'm supposed to be serious about, so I'll do it fast.

Six years ago my truck died on the highway at two in the morning, sixty miles from here, on my way back from my brother's. I didn't know who else to call. So I called the parts line, figuring I'd leave a message. It rang twice. "Parts. This is Rudy. What did you break?" At two in the morning. From his kitchen. He forwards that line home and he never told anybody.

He talked me through it for an hour. Then he drove out with the part.

Rudy, the computer is going to have a very hard year.

Everybody, raise a glass. To Rudy. Parts. What did you break?

Why it works: Every joke is about a habit Rudy is proud of, so he laughs hardest. The phone greeting gets set up as the joke, pays off in the 2 a.m. story, and comes back as the toast.