Retirement speech examples

Good evening, everyone. If I could have your attention for a few minutes, I promise to give you back to the buffet in good time. For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm Nick, and for the last eleven years I've had the job of being Brenda's manager. Linda and Adam, it's lovely to have you here tonight.

Brenda started here in March 1988. She was nineteen, the office was above a bank on the Parade, and the payroll for all two hundred staff was done on a typewriter and a very large calculator. She tells me there was also an ashtray on every desk, which is hard to imagine now. Today we employ just over eleven hundred people, and Brenda has made sure every one of them has been paid on time, every month, for 38 years. By my rough maths, that's about four hundred paydays without a single one missed.

That includes July 2007, when the river came up and the office flooded. Most of us were at home wondering what to do. Brenda had already carried the payroll files up to the first floor, borrowed a laptop and set herself up at her kitchen table in Whitnash. Linda, I understand you made the tea for three days straight. Everyone got paid on the Friday as normal, and most people never knew anything had gone wrong.

That's what Brenda is like. She doesn't make a fuss, and she doesn't let anything slip. If you've ever sent her a timesheet late, you'll know the email. It always starts with "Hope you're well", and somehow you have your timesheet in within the hour.

There's another side to Brenda that anyone who has had a baby while working here will know about. For over thirty years she has knitted a cardigan for every new arrival in the organisation. We worked it out last week, and it's somewhere around sixty cardigans. Some of those babies have now grown up and started working here themselves, which is a slightly alarming thought for all of us.

She's also been the person people go to when things aren't going well. She's sat with new starters who were worried about their first payslip, and she's helped more than a few colleagues sort out a problem quietly, without anybody else needing to know. I've lost count of the times someone has said to me, "Ask Brenda, she'll know." She always did.

So what's next? Brenda and Linda are planning to walk the whole of the South West Coast Path, a bit at a time, starting at Minehead in May. That's over six hundred miles, so we might not see much of them. In between, Brenda has promised Adam she'll finally learn to use the camera he bought her three Christmases ago.

We've got something to help with the walking. Everyone has chipped in for a proper pair of walking boots and a voucher for the rest of the kit, and there's a card that has been signed by just about everyone in the building, as well as a few people who retired before you did.

Brenda, thank you. You've looked after all of us for 38 years, and we're going to miss you very much.

So would you all please raise your glasses. To Brenda, and a very happy retirement.

Evening, everyone. I'm Donna, and I've worked with Kev for 22 years, which is longer than I've been married. Sorry, Jackie, you've had him for longer, so you win.

When I started here, Kev was the one who showed me round. He took me all over the warehouse, showed me the fire exits and the first aid box, and then took me to the most important place in the building, which was his shelf in the fridge. "That's mine," he said. "Everything on that shelf is mine." And for 22 years it has held exactly the same thing, which is one cheese and pickle barm, cut in half, wrapped in foil. Jackie, I have to ask. Has he ever had anything else?

Kev is also famous for his radio. There's been a radio on in the loading bay since before I started, and Kev is the only person allowed to touch it. It's been on Radio 2 since 2004, and I'm fairly sure the dial has rusted in place.

He likes things done properly. When we got the new handheld scanners in 2015, most of us were using them by lunchtime. Kev kept a clipboard in his back pocket for another six months, just in case. He still has it. I've seen it in his locker.

He also runs the office fantasy football league, and has done since 2006. In twenty years he has never won it once. He sends out a very long email every Monday, and every May he finishes somewhere near the bottom and says it's a "rebuilding year".

But here's the thing about Kev. If you're having a bad week, he notices. He's the one who covers your shift when your little one is poorly, and he never makes a big thing of it. Half the people on the night shift learned the job from him, and he's always had time for the new starters, even at four in the morning.

Kev tells me he's going to spend his retirement fishing on the canal and going to every Wolves home game, and Jackie tells me he's going to finally sort the garage out. We'll see who wins that one.

Kev, we'll miss you. The fridge won't be the same.

Can everyone raise their glasses, please. To Kev.

Thank you all for staying behind on the last day of term, when I know you'd all like to go home. I'm Imran, and I've had the pleasure of working with Hilary for the last nine of her 29 years here.

In that time, Hilary has taught somewhere around eight hundred children to read, and she's taught most of them to sing the seven times table to the tune of "Old MacDonald". Some of the parents at the gate this morning were in her class themselves, and I noticed a few of them still humming it.

Hilary's classroom has always been the one visitors remember. There's the hamster, who is currently called Biscuit and is the fourth Biscuit we've had, and the wall of thank-you cards from children who left years ago and still write to her.

As a colleague, she's the first person new teachers go to. When a new teacher has a hard first week, it's usually Hilary's classroom they end up in at half past three, and she always has the kettle on. She has also never once lost her temper in a staff meeting, which is more than I can say for myself.

Hilary and Stuart are off to New Zealand in October to spend the winter with their daughter and the grandchildren, and after that, Hilary says, she's going to read all the books she's been recommending to seven-year-olds for three decades.

Hilary, thank you. Please raise your glasses, or your mugs of tea. To Mrs Booth.