It’s the season of leaving dos for far-sighted sorts who plan their year to move jobs in time for a September start with a languid holiday beforehand. This necessitates send-offs as rich in alcoholic refreshment and social pitfalls as Eliza Doolittle’s appearance at Ascot.
Like most social interaction based around work, the leaving do is elaborately codified. My office, where troops of bright young things come and go to global locations with the sangfroid of people catching a bus to Dalston, often yokes them together into jumbo farewells. It gives rise to the puzzle of trying to match the home partner to the employee.
Like the more realistic Greeks, most of us accept the need to share leaving parties, but not the full austerity of no celebration at all. I am frankly relieved to see the back of the formal speech on the office floor, leaving the recipient writhing at heavy-handed jokes about their bathroom breaks or after-lunch unsteadiness.
Better repair to All Bar One and put a decent amount on the tab for bucketloads of pinot grigio. But not too much, as I recall from a hooley where one of the workers slapped another.
This week I am in training for a leaving bash hosted by no less than the upmarket journalistic equivalent of a tenant farmer, doggedly editing these pages for yonks. So here are the golden rules, in the knowledge that being a leaver entitles you to discard them.
Praise allies; ignore enemies. Do not be tempted to make the parting shot that goes: “I have enjoyed working with most of you/ being here most of the time.” The guilty will assume you mean someone else and it unnerves the rest.
Love your colleagues. An office by-law says you must tell them they are the best bunch of co-workers/bosses in the world. You can pick out highlights: “Sarah’s Dorothy Parker wit and appetite for pieces featuring Cara Delevingne will remain with me till I start my new gig and forget everything I ever did before.” But don’t be too selective, or you will offend the blameless drudges who put up with your grumps and peculiarities without complaint.
Disclosures. Clearly, we attend leaving dos partly to find out what is happening in the rest of the organisation — “So if Dave is moving to head up logistics, who’s getting that office HR had?” — but it is not the occasion to punt your own next move or critique the boss’s strategy. Like a funeral, the attention should be on the star of the show — the departer.
Jobs are becoming shorter in duration, particularly in the early years of careers (Britain has one of the fastest turnover rates in the developed world). So expect to buy a lot of goodbye cards in a working lifetime. If you want to stay in touch, do, but sending your email from home as a round robin leaves most of your crew wondering why you would want to swap news with Colin from IT, never having met him in the first place.
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Finally, workplace rituals, however hackneyed, are part of our lives — the sociology we live. So go along, smile and wave. One day you’ll rely on someone else to organise the implausibly large leaving card, signed by people you almost remember, half-fondly.
