1.Check it twice
I came here for a job and somehow I'm leaving with a second family. Before I trade badge swipes for slower mornings, I'd like to thank the people who made the hard days workable and the good days worth remembering.
Twenty-six years ago I started on the loading dock, and on my first day Ray Kowalski told me two things. Wear better boots, and never let the truck leave without checking the manifest twice. I bought the boots that weekend. I've checked every manifest twice since, including some that weren't mine, which I'm told was occasionally annoying. Ray retired in 2009. Ray, if you're watching from wherever retired dock supervisors go, the boots held up.
I'm not going to list the jobs. Most of you were there. What I'll say is that the thing I'm proudest of didn't happen in a meeting. It happened in 2014, the winter the roof went in the east warehouse, when a group of people who had every reason to go home stayed until three in the morning moving stock by flashlight, because nobody wanted to be the one who let the customer down. I looked around that night and thought, this is the place. I never seriously looked anywhere else after that.
Dana covered for me the month my father was sick and never mentioned it again. The second shift caught my mistakes before they became anyone else's problem, and the new hires asked me questions I'd stopped asking myself. You kept me honest. I don't have a way to repay any of that, so I'm going to do the thing Ray did, and leave you with two instructions. Look after the person next to you. Check it twice.
My plans are unambitious. There's a boat that needs more work than I have skill for, and a grandson who has been promised fishing lessons by someone who cannot fish. I'll learn. I've learned harder things here.
Thank you for twenty-six years. The boots are by the door. Don't let the truck leave.
Why this one works
- The first-day advice from Ray becomes the speaker's own parting advice, which gives the speech a frame without a single cliché.
- One night in 2014 stands in for the whole career. Nobody at a retirement party wants the résumé.
- Individual thanks are specific (the month a father was sick) and brief, so they land without becoming a roll call.
- The retirement plans are honest and small, which is funnier and warmer than a bucket list.