Retirement Speech for a Coworker: What to Say, 4 Examples

From the desk neighbor, light and funny (about 2 minutes)

Hi, everyone. I've sat four feet from Nelson for fourteen years, so I'm the only person in this building who can tell you what he's having for lunch today without looking. Turkey on rye. An apple, cut into eight pieces. Not six. I asked once.

He has eaten that lunch every workday since 2003. I did the math. It's somewhere around three thousand sandwiches, and he has never once been tempted by the pizza in the break room.

Here's the thing, though. That's also how Nelson reads a claim file. Same way, every time, every page, in order. When I started here, I was fast and I was sloppy, and I missed things. Nelson never told me that. He just slid a file across to me one afternoon and said, "Read it like a sandwich. Start at the top." I had no idea what he meant. It took me about a year. He was right.

Half of this department learned to read a file from that man, and most of them don't know it.

Nelson tells me he's going to spend the spring building a workshop behind his house, and he's going to learn to make chairs. I believe he'll make a very good chair. I suspect it'll be the same chair, every time.

Everybody, please raise a glass. To Nelson. Start at the top.

Why it works: the joke is a habit he would laugh at, and the same habit turns into the reason the speaker learned the job.

From a coworker on the warehouse floor, heartfelt (about 2 and a half minutes)

Good evening. I'm Odell. Norm trained me on the warehouse floor nine years ago, and some of you in this room were there for my first week, which I'm sorry about.

On my third day, I put a forklift tine through a pallet of glassware. Forty cases. The noise was so loud the office came out to look. I was sure I was done. Norm walked over, looked at it for a long time, and then went and got two brooms. He handed me one. While we swept, he said, "Well, now you've done the worst one. Everything after this is easier." Then he went to the office and told them he'd signed off on the load.

He hadn't. He took that for me, and he never brought it up again.

What most people don't know is that Norm came in twenty minutes early every day for twenty-six years and walked the whole floor before anyone else got there. Checking the racks. Moving things out of the aisles. If you've worked here and never gotten hurt, some of that is luck, and some of it is Norm.

He tells me he's going to build a canoe in his garage this winter and put it in the lake in May. His grandkids have already named it. He won't tell me the name, which means it's embarrassing.

Norm, thank you for the broom.

Please raise your glasses, everybody. To Norm. Everything after this is easier.

Why it works: the speaker's worst day becomes the story, and the retiree's one line from that day becomes the toast.

From a coworker who wasn't that close, at an office send-off (about 1 and a half minutes)

I'll be honest with you. I didn't work with Orson as closely as a lot of you did. I'm on the third floor. What I know about Orson is the coffee machine.

Every morning for six years, I've come in at about ten to eight, and every morning the coffee was already made. The machine was wiped down, the filters were stacked, and there was a note taped to the side about which pot was decaf. I assumed for about two years that the building paid someone to do it. They didn't. It was Orson, every day, before he went to his own desk.

When I told people I was speaking today, Noel from accounting told me one more thing. Orson knows the name of every person who has ever worked on this floor, and the names of most of their kids. That tracks. You don't make coffee for eighty people for six years without learning who drinks what.

He's moving closer to his daughter in the spring, and he says he plans to let somebody else make the coffee for once.

So, coffee up, everyone. To Orson. Somebody else's turn.

Why it works: it admits the distance, sticks to the one thing the speaker really saw, and borrows a second detail with credit.

From a coworker at a retirement dinner at the office's favorite restaurant (about 2 and a half minutes)

Hi, everyone. I'm Paulette. I've been a hygienist at this practice for sixteen years, which means Patsy has been telling me where to be for sixteen years, and she has been right almost every time.

Patsy has run the front desk for twenty-eight years. If you've been a patient, you know her. She's the one who asked about your son's tryouts, by name, eight months after you mentioned them.

Here's how she does it. Behind the desk there's a gray metal box of index cards. One card for every family. On the back, in pencil, Patsy writes down whatever you told her. The dog's name. The new job. The kid who was nervous about braces. Nobody asked her to do this. It isn't in any system. When she leaves, that box is going home with her, and I asked if we could keep it, and she said no, and she's right.

What I'll miss most is how she handled the scared ones. Every practice has patients who don't want to be there. Patsy would walk them back herself, talk to them about their card, and hand them off to us already calmer. We got the credit for that. It was her.

She's going to Italy with her sister in April, and she's been learning the language for a year. She practices on the voicemail. Some of you have heard it.

Patsy, I don't know who's going to remember all of us now.

Please raise your glasses. To Patsy, and the gray box.

Why it works: one small object carries the whole speech, and the speaker names the quiet work without making it heavy.