Reply to Please stop buying plaques as gifts for retirees/farewells

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nobody knows what to do anymore.

People miss significant gifts like watches.

Most retirement presents aren't useful - except for gift cards.

My team did give an Apple Watch to a guy that was retiring after 35-40 years.  They had collected a lot of cash.

Sometimes the party is the best present.  A lot of people get no recognition.[/quote]

I just retire from the govt. and got a plaque. [b] I appreciate the sentiment[/b] but what the heck?  Am I supposed to hang it in my home?  Nope.  It is hiding in my
Closet along with the other plaques I received.  Just give me a card with some thoughtful notes and a nice coffee gathering in the morning.[/quote]

That's the thing, there is no thought/ sentiment behind it because everyone receives a plaque. At this point, it screams box checking.[/quote]

So, as somebody who has had to organize dozens of farewell parties/gifts for employees over the years - sorry, but the exercise is not for you, it's for the office. People want to "do something" and feel that something will be done for them when they leave. That's why you get a plaque.

I realize you'd probably like a gift card, but your colleagues and my boss think that's too impersonal (too easy) so we don't do that.

You're not getting a thoughtful personal gift [i]even if [/i]we have a lot of money collected because (a) I am organizing this on top of my real job and I'm busy, and (b) I have to think about the expectations being set / already set in past years, in the sense that one employee can't be seen to get a significantly nicer or more thoughtful gift than another employee. If we collect more than the plaque costs, you get nicer food at the party. If we collect less, I make up the difference out of my own pocket. [/quote]

So stop organizing if you can’t be bothered to buy people anything other than a hunk of crap. Better to give nothing.[/quote]

The goal is not to give the person a gift. The point is the demonstration [i]for other people[/i] that milestones are recognized. Bluntly, the preferences of the person leaving are not as important as those of the people staying.

Boss organizes and subsidizes it because it looks like low morale if the office does nothing, and because one of the supervisor performance categories is recognizing and rewarding people. If they thought they could get away with a gift card, they would.

That doesn't mean we didn't like you! We probably did. But you would get the plaque and party whether we did or not.[/quote]

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