Humour on a leaving card is high risk and high return. Done well it is the message people actually read out; done badly it is the one that makes a room go quiet. Everything in this set stays on the safe side of the line by aiming at the situation rather than at the person, and by assuming the card will be read by their family as well as by the team.
Use these when you know the person well enough to predict how they will take it, and when the departure is genuinely a good one. Both conditions matter.
If they were made redundant, or if you are not sure why they are going, skip this set entirely — a joke about escape lands very differently when leaving was not the plan. The warm and short sets on the main farewell page are written to work either way, without you having to know.
Archive started 21 August 2026 · last updated 21 August 2026
“I am genuinely happy for your brilliant new role, even though I am officially filing a grievance regarding who will now give me the knowing look during our marathon status calls. Congratulations—you have earned every bit of this.”
“You are leaving, and with you goes the only living knowledge of why that job runs at four in the morning. I have made my peace with this. Genuinely though, congratulations, and thank you for a very good few years.”
“You are the only manager I have had who canceled meetings rather than adding them, and I want that on the record somewhere permanent. Congratulations on the new role. I hope they understand what they have just hired.”
“I am contractually obliged to be pleased for you and, irritatingly, I actually am. You have been excellent throughout. Go and be a problem for a different manager for a while.”
“Work is going to be considerably less funny from Monday, and that is the smallest of the reasons I am glad you are going somewhere better. Congratulations. First round is on me, and the group chat continues regardless.”
“With you gone I lose access to roughly four years of free consultancy, which I have clearly been under-valuing. Congratulations on the move, and thank you for all of it.”
“Your handover document is longer than most of our policies and considerably better written. Thank you for that, and for everything that made it necessary. Go and be excellent somewhere else.”
“You are leaving behind a mug, a monitor stand and roughly four hundred unread messages in the alerts channel. I have decided to inherit only the monitor stand. Good luck out there, and thank you for everything that was not the alerts channel.”
“With you gone, someone has to run the Thursday sync, and I want it on record that I have already volunteered someone else. Seriously though, you made a dull hour genuinely useful. Go and be excellent somewhere with better coffee.”
“I would like to object, in writing, to the removal of the only person on this row who ever answered a question properly. Objection noted and ignored, presumably. Go well, and do not be a stranger.”
“You are taking with you the only reliable filter between this team and every bad idea that arrives after four o clock on a Friday. We will cope, badly, and we will think of you fondly while we do it.”
“Delighted for you and mildly outraged on behalf of everyone here. If you find yourself hiring in about eight months, you have my number and you know exactly how much trouble I am.”
“I did try to keep you. I was outbid, out-argued and eventually out-manoeuvred by a job that is plainly better for you. Take the win. You have earned it, and I expect to hear that you are running the place shortly.”
“You are the first person in my career to finish a handover document before the last week, which frankly makes the rest of us look terrible. Thank you, and I hope your new team appreciates how rare that is.”
“I will keep repeating your advice in meetings and letting people assume it is mine. It is the highest compliment available and also, unfortunately, theft. Thank you for all of it. Go and enjoy the next thing.”
“For the record, I thought you were difficult for roughly the first month, and I have never been more usefully wrong about anyone. Thank you for the arguments, all of which improved the work, and for the several years of friendship that followed them. The next place has no idea what it is getting.”
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