Prepare the cups, plan your fundraising budgets. When the next life resumes, our first week will be devoted to stringing fifteen months of jars in meeting rooms. A year already that all the emails announcing the departures of colleagues end with messages sorry to the idea that they occur in conditions which do not allow to say goodbye, but that nothing is lost for expect.
Obviously, there would have been no question of maintaining them at all costs, at the risk of passing the hierarchy for a bunch of irresponsible (in March 2020, a departure drink at the Paris City Hall turned out to be a nice cluster and nobody wants to see their departure party go around social networks, such as those of the Aubervilliers police station or the town hall of Valenciennes). No question either for the management to admit honestly that we have given up on it because in 2022 we will have already forgotten the names of those who have left. While we had convinced ourselves that the departure pots, like the meetings, were part of the sometimes painful essentials of business life, lock us up for fifteen months and here they are which seem to have become the culmination of our professional experiences.
Like a thief
Ask those nearing retirement how they feel, and suddenly it’s the pot question that nags them. Heard: “In a few months, I will no longer be here and there may just be autoreply [le message automatique] of the mailbox to notice it. “ Or : “If it continues like this, all it takes is a Filipino or Maltese variant and I’m going to retire without getting my jacket back at work.… ” Director of a software company currently working from home, Olivier is due to leave in May. Here he is, wondering if he will have the opportunity to come back to his office before leaving. He does not see himself asking his colleagues to come back to the company to say goodbye to them (“The atmosphere will be zero”), but he doesn’t see himself leaving like that either, like a thief (“And I would like to have a present”).
Journalist, Philippe had reserved a bar for his departure in March 2020. Everything was planned for about sixty people, a perfect organization, if not the date, ten days after the start of confinement. Like everyone else, he started by saying that we would do this in June, and then “We’ll do it again at the start of the school year”. Today, he could no longer say exactly what year he was thinking of when the new school year started. His colleagues sent him the envelope provided. As is the new custom, he went to buy his gift on his own and sent them a photo (at Litchee, the share of the “starting pot” jackpots directly offered to the beneficiary in hard cash increased by 25%. in 2020 compared to 2019).
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