This Is This

I like to be the first to sign someone’s leaving card. That way I can write “take care” or “all the best” before someone else does.

If a leaving card gets round the office before it makes its way to your desk, you can guarantee that someone else has already done the “take care” and “all the best” messages.

So you can either repeat what they put and look really insincere, or you can try and be funny.

This is very risky. The one thing worse than being the Office Joker is being the guy who thinks he’s the Office Joker but is desperately unfunny.

The other alternative is to put something heartfelt. But then you risk looking shmaltzy, especially if the real Office Joker goes and writes something funny.

The best comment I ever got on a leaving card was from my previous job when a friend wrote: “With you out of the way I can finally get my monorail scheme approved.”

A leaving card went round recently and a collague was not sure what to write.

Colleague 1: Who is this for again?

Me: Sally.

(Sally was in charge of “Editorial Integrity”, a division which made sure we didn’t broadcast anything unsuitable for the audience. In a job where reporting the ugliness of life’s rich circus is often the plat du jour*, we have had many heated debates over what was and what wasn’t innappropriate material for family consumption.)

Colleague 1 (with scornful glee): Right, that’s it. I’m drawing a huge pair of tits.

Me: I wouldn’t do that…

Colleague 2: Don’t mention Chomsky either. There are already three references on there.

Me: To Noam Chomsky? Who gets three references to a social commentator and eniment linguist on their leaving card?? That’s so highbrow it’s insane.

Colleague 2: Apparently she likes Chomsky. She quotes him all the time.

Colleague 1: Oh right, that’s it. I’m definitely drawing a huge pair of tits. I’m going to draw a huge pair of tits and I’m going to write: “Have a Chomsky on that.”

Good thing it wasn’t Kant.

*”Life’s rich circus” is a dish best served cold. Preferably with relish.

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