What a Leaving Do Gift Is Really Saying (and How to Say It Properly)

We're based in Kent, and we've made a lot of leaving gifts. We've read the messages people have put on them — the carefully considered ones and the ones that made us laugh out loud reading them — and we've learned that the best leaving gifts aren't really about the object at all.

They're about what the object is saying. And the object can say a lot, or it can say nothing, depending almost entirely on how much thought went into choosing it.

The leaving do — a distinctly British ritual

The leaving do is a peculiarly British institution. In most cultures, someone leaving a job is just leaving. In Britain, it's an event. The collection tin goes around, circulated by someone who's slightly uncomfortable asking but does it anyway. A card gets passed from desk to desk. Forty people sign it in thirty seconds each. Someone organises a leaving do, usually in the pub that's nearest to the office. There's a speech. There might be a quiz. Someone cries, possibly the person leaving, possibly someone who's been there since before they arrived.

The gift in this context has a specific job. It's not primarily about utility — they probably don't need another mug, technically. It's about making a physical object that carries a message: we thought about you specifically, and we wanted you to have something that proves it.

That's why generic leaving gifts fall flat. A bottle of wine says "we fulfilled the social obligation." A personalised gift says "we actually thought about you." The difference in how that lands is enormous.

The office collection reality

Let's be honest about budgets. The office collection doesn't always produce a fortune. Sometimes it's generous. Sometimes it's a fiver in an envelope that someone shook at people for thirty seconds in the kitchen. Both situations are fine. Some of our best leaving gifts cost under a tenner.

Our custom emergency chocolate bar is one of them. At £6.30, it's a full-size bar with a personalised wrapper — "Emergency New Job Survival Kit", their name, a message from the team, or an inside joke that absolutely nobody outside the office would understand but that makes everyone in the office immediately laugh. It arrives, it gets read, it gets laughed at, it gets eaten. For under £7, it does more emotional work than most gifts three times the price.

"The best leaving gifts are specific. Not 'you're great' but 'you specifically, in this specific way, meant this specific thing to us.' The more specific, the better it lands."

The mug they'll take to their new desk

There's something satisfying about giving a leaving gift that follows someone to their next place. A mug they'll put on their new desk, in their new office, and that colleagues will ask about. "What does that say?" "Oh, it's from my old job." That's a conversation about you, about the team, about the time they had there — happening somewhere else, long after they've left.

For someone leaving because they've genuinely earned it — new job, better role, finally made the leap they'd been talking about — we'd suggest something with a bit of attitude. Our IDGAF mug, personalised with their name and a message from the team, is the one that gets photographed and shared. It acknowledges that they've reached a point where they don't have to pretend to be fine with everything anymore, which is honestly a legitimate milestone.

For someone who's become a genuine friend rather than just a colleague — someone you'll actually miss, not just someone whose presence you'll notice the absence of — something warmer. Our Awesome Friend mug is simple, honest, and says exactly what it means without requiring anyone to be clever about it.

For retirements — a different kind of leaving

Retirement is not the same as leaving for a new job, and the gift should reflect that. Someone leaving for a new job is moving to the next chapter. Someone retiring is closing a whole volume of their life. The thing they need from a gift is different: not energy for what's next, but acknowledgement of what was.

Something lasting. Something for their home rather than their new desk, because their home is where they'll be now. Our personalised slate boards have become one of our most popular retirement gifts for exactly this reason. "Dave's Kitchen", "[Name]'s Garden", "[Name] — Officially Retired [Year]" — something that goes on a wall in their home and is still there twenty years later, long after the card has been thrown away and the wine has been drunk.

And for the retirement leaving do specifically — our OAP Discount Please badge is the perfect addition. It costs less than a card, gets the biggest laugh in the room, and paired with a slate board makes for a complete gift that covers both the funny and the lasting. Which is, when you think about it, a reasonable way to approach any milestone: acknowledge it with humour, and then give them something that treats it seriously.

Splashing out — when they really deserve it

For someone who's been in the role for years. For someone who's genuinely carried the team. For a retirement after a long career. Sometimes the collection is generous and you want to give something genuinely substantial.

A personalised hoodie is the gift that goes beyond the occasion. Something wearable, something that'll be reached for every weekend for years, something with the team name or a date or a phrase that only makes sense to the people who were there. We've made these for long-serving colleagues, for team leaving dos, for retirements where the person meant enough to spend properly.

Getting the message right

The message on a leaving gift is harder to write than it looks. You want it to be specific — referencing something real about them, something that could only be for this person. But you also want it to land in a room full of people, which means it needs to be legible to everyone, not just the inner circle.

The best leaving gift messages we've made tend to fall into two categories. Either very warm — "Seven years. Every single day better for having you in it." — or very funny — "Finally. We were starting to think you actually liked it here." Both work. What doesn't work is the middle ground: vague enough to apply to anyone, but specific enough to seem personal without quite getting there.

If you're stuck, message us. Tell us a bit about the person and we'll help you find the right words. We dispatch within 1–3 working days from our workshop in Kent — if the leaving do is this Friday, message us and we'll see what we can do.