What to Write in a Retirement Card: Close Colleague to Barely-Knew

So it helps to be honest with yourself about which category you fall into before you start writing. The message that works from someone's work-wife of fifteen years will sound unhinged coming from the person two desks over who they vaguely nodded at in the kitchen. Below are messages that work for both ends of that spectrum, plus the stuff to swerve.

If you actually knew them well

When you've shared years of deadlines, bad coffee and the same irritating all-staff emails, you have room to be warm and specific. Specific is the whole game here. A generic "you'll be missed" from a close colleague reads as lazy, because they know you had more to say than that.

Try naming one actual thing. The project that nearly killed you both. The thing they always said in meetings. The lunch spot. The running joke about the printer. One sentence of real memory does more work than a paragraph of "wishing you all the best in this exciting new chapter".

A few that tend to land:

• "The place is going to feel very odd without you in it. Thank you for every tea run, every sanity check and every time you talked me down from sending that email. Enjoy every minute of what's next."
• "I keep trying to write something clever and failing, so I'll just say thank you. For the laughs, the honesty, and for always knowing where the good biscuits were hidden."
• "You've earned every second of this. Don't check your emails. Don't 'just pop in'. Go and do the thing."

If they've got a hobby waiting for them, lean into it. A card that nods at the fishing trips they've been quietly planning for a decade, maybe alongside a mug that just says Monday: fishing., feels thought-through in a way that a generic bouquet never will.

If you barely knew them

This is the harder one, and it's where people panic and write something odd. The temptation is to either overclaim ("it's been such a pleasure working with you" when you've exchanged nine words in three years) or underclaim ("best wishes, Dave" which reads as if you resent being handed the card).

The move is to be warm, brief, and honest about scale. You don't need to pretend to a friendship. You just need to acknowledge them as a person and wish them well, which is a perfectly nice thing to do and takes two sentences.

Something like:

• "Our paths didn't cross as often as I'd have liked, but I always heard good things. Wishing you a brilliant retirement."
• "Congratulations on finishing the job. I hope the next chapter is everything you want it to be."
• "Enjoy every slow morning and every properly made cup of tea. You've earned them."
• "Here's to no more alarms and no more Monday meetings. Have a wonderful retirement."

Any of those are perfectly dignified. None of them pretend you were close. All of them read as if a human being wrote them rather than a HR template.

If you want a bit of gentle humour and you know they've grumbled about remote-working life, a nod to that works, something in the spirit of No more online meetings... ...ever! will usually get a smile without requiring any inside knowledge of the person.

What to avoid

Age jokes are the big one. "Enjoy the Werther's Originals" and "don't fall asleep in front of Countdown" feel safe because they're everywhere on shop-bought cards, but they rely on the retiree finding getting old funny. Plenty don't. Plenty are retiring at fifty-five, feel exactly the same as they did at thirty-five, and are mildly insulted by a card implying they're about to start shouting at pigeons.

Safer territory is the work ending, not the person ageing. Jokes about freedom from meetings, inboxes, commutes and 7am alarms all land. Jokes about hips, memory and bedtimes often don't, especially from someone they barely know.

A few other things worth sidestepping:

• Anything that sounds like you're glad they're going. "Finally!" is a joke that only works between genuine friends.
• Over-promising to stay in touch if you both know you won't. "Let's definitely get lunch" from an acquaintance is just small print nobody reads.
• Faux-wistful stuff about "the end of an era" if you've no real sense of their era.
• Inside jokes you've picked up second-hand. If you weren't there, don't reference it.

If they're known for a hobby you can lightly nod to it without needing a shared history. Birdwatchers in particular tend to appreciate anything that acknowledges the garden feeder is now a full-time concern, and a card paired with something like Carol singers. Paid in sunflower hearts. works even if you've never discussed birds with them, because it's clearly a kind, specific gesture rather than a last-minute grab.

Signing off

The sign-off trips people up more than it should. Match it to the relationship and don't overthink it.

• Close: "With love," "Lots of love," "Love and thanks,"
• Warm but not close: "All the very best," "With warm wishes," "Wishing you a brilliant retirement,"
• Polite and professional: "Best wishes," "Kind regards," "All the best,"

If you're genuinely stuck, "With warm wishes" is the quiet workhorse. It sounds sincere, it doesn't claim intimacy you don't have, and it works whether you shared an office for twenty years or passed each other in the lift.

And if the card is being passed round the whole floor and you're writing in a two-centimetre gap near the staples, nobody is grading you. A specific line, a legible name, done.