Retirement Speech Examples: 3 Speeches (For a Colleague, From the Boss, and Your Own)

“I'm Dana, and I've worked with Sandra at the Eastside branch for eleven of her twenty-nine years, which makes me, by her standards, new.

Here is the story everyone here already knows and wants to hear again. In 2016 the council cut our Saturday hours. Sandra did not write a letter. She did not start a petition. She stood at the front desk every Saturday at nine with the doors locked and a sign that said 'Closed by the council. Sandra is here anyway. Knock.' People knocked. She let them in. She did this for seven weeks, on her own time, until someone at the council got tired of the phone calls. The Saturday hours came back. She never mentioned it again.

That is what Sandra is like. She doesn't argue about what a library is for. She just keeps being one.

What changes when she leaves is hard to say out loud, so I'll say a small version. Every child who has come to Tuesday story time for twenty-nine years has been greeted by name. Not 'hello, sweetheart.' By name. Some of those children now bring their own children, and she knows their names too. We will keep doing story time. We will not be able to do that.

Sandra, you've told us your plan is 'a garden and a very long book.' We hope the garden is enormous and the book is terrible, so you have to come back and complain about it.

Please raise your glasses. To Sandra: knock any time. We'll let you in.”

“I'm Paul, and I've been Renée's manager for six years, which is a sentence Renée finds funnier than I do.

When I started, I was handed a laptop, a badge, and a piece of advice from my predecessor: 'Don't change the month-end process. Renée built it. It works.' I ignored that for exactly one month-end. On the second day of chaos, Renée came into my office, put a coffee on the desk, and said, 'Would you like me to show you why it's like that?' She did not say 'I told you so.' She has still not said it. It has been six years.

That is the thing about Renée that doesn't show up in an eighteen-year service record. She is the person who makes new people competent without making them feel new. I counted this week. Fourteen people in this room were trained by her. Three of them now run departments. One of them is me.

The process still works, by the way. I haven't touched it since.

Renée, you've said you're going to spend the first month 'not setting an alarm,' and I want you to know that the team has already changed your calendar to read 'Renée: unavailable, forever' in a colour you'll hate.

Please raise your glasses. To Renée: thank you for showing us why it's like that.”

“Thank you. I've been told I have five minutes, and after thirty-five years I've learned that when this company says five minutes, it means five minutes.

I started here in 1991 as a junior draughtsman with a pencil, a set square, and a boss called Ray who told me on my first day that the drawing is not finished until someone can build it without ringing you. I've spent thirty-five years trying to make drawings nobody needs to ring me about. I've mostly failed, which is why some of you have my number.

I want to say thank you to three groups. To the people who trained me, most of whom are retired and one of whom, Ray, is here and still checking my work. To the people I trained, who have made me look better than I am for two decades and who I'm now handing the phone to. And to Helen, who has heard about every bridge, every culvert, and every planning meeting since 1994, and who has never once asked me to stop talking about them, though she would have been within her rights.

People keep asking what I'll do. I'm going to build a shed. I'm going to draw it first. Somebody will have to build it without ringing me.

I'm not going to say I'll miss the work, because you'll know I'm being polite. I will miss the people. I already do, and I haven't left yet.

Please raise your glasses, not to me, to the drawing that gets built without a phone call. May you all make one.”