When a coworker is retiring, it’s a big thing. For everyone in the company. It’s not always something that you get to experience. Coworkers come and go eventually, you come and go, people move, change jobs, careers, invest in a food truck, all that. People do all sorts of different things with their lives. No matter how good the employee appreciation gifts are, they move on in time. Gifts for employees appreciation and custom corporate gift boxes can only do so much.

But when you’re experiencing someone moving on to such a milestone in their life, like retirement, it’s noteworthy. Think about it. “Retirement.” Just the word itself. It has a profound allure. Like “paradise” or “breakfast burrito.” Someone entering retirement is entering the mystical, magical place away from the troubles of the world. It feels like it anyway. Like when Frodo gets on that ship at the end of Lord of the Rings. Same exact thing as that (except for the elves). 

I say this because a coworker of mine recently retired. Well, it’s not as simple as that. Actually, it sort of is, but not really. I guess it’s best I just tell you the story. It involves misunderstanding, deception, custom gift boxes, more deception, even more custom gift boxes, a couple of twists, and hopefully laughter.

His name is Lawrence Eckman, the coworker of mine. We all call him Larry. A few of us, mainly Chris and Richie, refer to him as “Lah’”. “Hey, Lah, what are you doing for lunch?” That sort of thing. They’d been working with him for longer than any of us, so that might explain it.

But the fact that Larry was, according to himself, retiring, raised a few questions. He wasn’t an advanced age, he didn’t win any kind of lottery as far as I know, his wife wasn’t a rich heiress, the company still needed him, etc. All these things made me wonder if he was, in fact, “fake retiring” and simply working from home from here on out. And that he was telling us he was retiring just to get great retirement gifts and, well, resell them for profit.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one in the company that suspected that. Not at all. And there was reason for it.

Before I go on, let me just say, Larry is a good guy. Really. He’s always been a good worker, a pleasant guy to be around, he’s cracked a funny quip or two. Decent man. But -  and I’m not the only one who knows this - he has consistently resold company gifts and coworker gifts. Everything from gift baskets for office staff to birthday gifts to employee appreciation gift baskets to joke gifts to, funnily enough, work from home gift baskets. Larry takes them, says “thank you,” and resells them. On eBay, Craigslist, other various internet marketplaces. 

So, after the retirement announcement, a few of us - Dan Chesky, Marion Kahn and Lucinda Li, to name names - got to talking. I don’t know who brought it up first, I think it was Marion. The moment she said that she thought Lawrence was fake-retiring, the other three of us went “Yes!” It was so simultaneous that it almost scared us. Which immediately gave the suspicion a kind of validation, the fact that we all thought the same exact thing. We went on, before looking over our shoulders in the office, to flesh out our theory: that Larry was lying to resell the retirement gifts and he would continue working for the company remotely while, presumably, cutting off all contact from the rest of us. We ran with this theory and decided to enact a kind of cosmic justice by pranking him. There was no way we were going to let him take advantage of any more gift baskets for employees working from home, or corporate gift baskets for employees. No, sir.

How would we prank him, you ask? After much thought and discussion (at no extra expense to our company, I swear!) we came up with a plan. We would each get Larry a gift for his retirement, yes. But we would take a creative approach. The gifts would be thoughtful but absolutely un-resellable. Which would require some homespun artistry, some outside-of-the-box thinking, and some resourcefulness - making it a good work exercise on top of a sweet prank. 

No component of the gift can have resale value, at least not to the point that it’s worth trying to resell (because even affordable curated gift boxes have resale value). Larry would have to keep these gifts, wondering what in the heck he’s going to do with them. Look at them? Poke them? Dump them? Burn them? Maybe even, against all odds, treasure them? But the on thing he won’t be able to do is make money off of them.

Marion did a take on one of the items in the curated employee gift boxes we’d get every now and then. Instead of a monogrammed wine opener, she got him a cheap, 99-cent store wine opener, but painted it the colors of Larry’s favorite socks (which he liked to show off). Perfect! Who’s going to want to buy that? And she wasn’t the only one that took inspiration from a custom gift box builder and affordable curated gift boxes. Dan got him a calendar, not of the current or upcoming year, but of the year Larry started working. Good dig up, Dan!

The big moment arrives: Larry’s “last day at the company.” We’re in the cafeteria with him, talking about old times at the job, his plans for the future, the things he’ll do and the places he’ll see in the autumn of his life, whatever.

Finally, it’s time. We take out our gifts and give them to him with a big flourish. We cheerfully demand that Larry opens them one by one. I’m sure he was expecting some nice things (we could almost see his eyeballs turn into dollar signs). The kinds of things he got used to during Covid with the care packages for remote employees and the thank you gifts for remote employees. I can’t blame him. Some of the stuff we got was pretty nice!

But then, one-by-one, he opened our gifts. We read his subtle but telling reactions with great interest. First Dan’s calendar, then Marion’s shabby wine opener, then mine. I spent a good evening coming up with this and wanted to enjoy the fruits of my labor. He stuck his hand in the overly glittery gift bag I pulled it out in all its glory: a teddy bear made in the likeness of Larry. Complete with a moustache, thick-rimmed glasses, and even the right hair part. The polite chuckle he gave did not hide his disappointment. These were not the prizes from remote employee gift boxes he was used to, that’s for sure!

He finally opened the last of our gifts, from Lucinda. It was one of those truly unique gifts for employees, because you’ve probably never seen it anywhere. Not in small care packages for employees, not even in the best gift boxes for employees. She got him a welcome mat that said “Gone Fishin’.” Yes, you heard that. Why is that on a welcome mat, you ask? Great question. Just the one that was probably running through Larry’s mind. Along with, “Why are these people doing this to me?”

There was a semi-awkward silence afterwards. We assumed he was trying to muster the energy for the fakest, biggest thank you in world history. But instead, he surprised us.

Larry stood up. “I see what’s happening here,” he said. “You think I’m faking my retirement in order to resell the gifts."

We were stunned. We each felt like the captured culprit in an old murder mystery.

Larry continued. "I see that you took the unique gifts for employees very seriously in this endeavour," he sniffed. "Truth is, I am retiring."

He then turned and walked out of the room.

Sigh.

What could we do to remedy this situation? The immediate thought we all had was to re-buy him some actual gifts that someone would actually give to someone who was actually retiring. But then we felt like that wasn’t enough. We had ground to make up, karmic interest to pay. This had to be better than the company’s gifts for employees working from home, even more thoughtful than the work from home care package for employees (our gold standard - they came with luxury soaps, after all!).

So, what we wound up doing was pooling together. We bought Larry and his lovely wife Jean an upscale evening jazz cruise around the harbor. Along with that, we presented Larry with individual gifts. Good ones. Watches and Fitbits and stuff. Better than anything you’d find in a care package for employees working from home.

Larry was happy and accepted our humble apologies. That was the best we could ask for in the situation.

After we made things right with Larry, it was all good. Larry gave us genuine, official goodbyes, and returned it in kind. I, for one, knew that I was going to sleep better. The prank was never meant to be mean-spirited at any point, but the fact that it fell totally flat with a solid dude like Larry made all four of us feel like garbage. All’s well that ends well, ay? Back to just worrying about corporate gift boxes for clients.

Only… a twist! it didn’t.

One day, Marion comes into the break room. She got me, Lucinda and Dan together to give us shocking news: Larry, in fact, didn’t retire! He moved back to Ohio to work from home for the company! We were, after all, totally right about him!

Worst part of all, he had our amazing “I’m sorry” gifts to do as he pleased with a.k.a. sell off for money. On top of that, he would still be getting corporate gifts for employees from the company in that fancy corporate gift box packaging containing amazing things, till the day he finally did retire, if that ever happens now! 

But you know what, Larry, I just have one thing to say in the end:

Touche, my friend. Touche.