The Retirement Party

Joyce Fisher had known that the girls from the office were planning a surprise retirement party since she overheard them talking about it in the kitchen one day when she joined them for lunch un-expectantly.  Usually she went to the local café for her sandwich and earl grey tea with milk.  But one day she decided to venture upstairs and join the others for a chat.  They were all so surprised to see her there that they stopped their conversation immediately.  In particular, young Caitlin put away her notebook, which Joyce assumed, could have only contained some or all of the details for the party.

As it turned out, lunch that day didn’t go so well.  Joyce didn’t really understand a lot of the conversation, jokes or references and it seemed, from time to time, that the girls might have even been making fun of her. Usually she liked to keep herself separate from them in order to keep a professional distance.  After all, she was the office manager of O’Sullivan and Sons and perhaps lunch was too intimate after all. Actually, young Caitlin wasn’t the worst of them.  But even she had a sly smile on occasions and had a habit of saying “I’ll try to get to that today” when Joyce gave her an instruction.  Caitlin had an unbearable habit of going swimming before work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and would arrive at the office with her hair still wet and placed in a messy knot on top of her head, like an ice-cream about to fall over.  Joyce had mentioned it once or twice to Mr O’Sullivan, but he had barely acknowledged the comment and nothing was done about her concerns.

Mr O’Sullivan, or Dan as everyone else called him, was young, bright and handsome and ran the office with a casualness that his father, Mr O’Sullivan senior, would never have approved of.  Mr O’Sullivan senior, had been an aloof, distant and robust boss who was firm but fair.  He was proper and professional and Joyce missed him every day.  She had started working with him in the summer of ‘66 and had fallen in love with him immediately.  The affair only lasted that first summer, but even afterwards she respected him.  She respected him for the gentlemanly way he had ended the relationship and yet managed to keep a decent working relationship with her, until his death in 1984. But as soon as Dan took over things changed.  Out went the old typewriters and dictaphones and in came open plan office space, plants and computers.  She had seen so many changes over the years.

But she had decided that she would attend the surprise retirement party.  She would be gracious for the gifts, the speeches, the flowers and then head home early leaving the youngsters to go off dancing or whatever it was they did with their work nights out when she wasn’t around. On her last day, a Thursday, she decided to wear something a little less formal than her suits and chose a yellow dress she had worn to her god son’s wedding two years earlier.  She came into the office and was met by Caitlin, fresh in from her swim.

“Morning Joyce, ah you look lovely today, what a gorgeous dress”.

“Thank you Caitlin – now if you come to me at 9.15am and we can go through Mr O’Sullivan’s diary for next month.  There are a few things we need to discuss by close of business today”.

“No worries.  I’ll come to your office in five”.

Joyce didn’t actually have an office, not since the refurbishment.  But everyone called her desk, which was surrounded like a fort by the photocopier and filing cupboards, her office.  Caitlin came to her, with a cup of tea in her china cup and saucer, and they began to discuss Dan’s diary for April.  Caitlin wasn’t paying as much attention to the diary as Joyce would have liked. In fact, she was hardly writing anything down at all and when Joyce questioned her about it, she simply said “a lot of this stuff is in the CAB”

“The CAB?”

“Central appointments bookings”

“Of course”. About half way through the meeting, Caitlin said “Sorry Joyce, I really have to run now.  I have a 10.00am with Dan, so we’re going to have to leave it there.  I guess you can spend the rest of the day with your feet up?”

“With my feet up, certainly not” said Joyce.

Joyce spent the rest of the morning responding to emails, sending personal farewells to old time clients and clearing her desk of personal items.  A few photos of the god son, her own personal stationery, and her china cup and saucer needed to be taken home.   How odd it would be to not come into number 28 Baggot Street every morning.  She wasn’t afraid of retiring.  She had many hobbies including her garden, chess, and book club of course.  But it would be strange not to be in work every day, to be suddenly so dispensable. How the office had changed since ‘66.  Back in the day you could smoke in the office, make jokes that wouldn’t offend anyone, and people wore suits with polished shoes.

Nowadays the entire staff had MBAs and were constantly attending training sessions to “up-skill”.  Joyce had attended a training session once and was horrified to find a twenty year old in jeans and a logo t.shirt write-up a selection of words on flip-chart paper and expect it to mean something.  At the end of the day the participants had to write one word on the paper to express how they felt.  Joyce had written the word “exasperated”. At 4.45pm Joyce went to the bathroom and applied some pink lipstick, she brushed her hair and sprayed a little perfume.  Usually she didn’t like the other girls using the bathroom as a changing room, but this was an exception.  This was her surprise retirement party and she had decided to breathe a little easier.  Actually, she felt quite brazen during the mini-pampering she gave herself while the others were working outside.

But when she came back into the main office her heart sank.

All of the girls, including Caitlin, were getting ready to leave and were talking about “Happy Hour” in the bar across the street.  Happy Hour!  Two for the price of one!  Surely they didn’t expect her to sit on a high stool with her feet dangling, sipping a brightly coloured drink from a straw.  Thankfully, they weren’t expecting anything of her at all. As they continued to put on their coats and cheap jackets, they stared saying things to her like “all the best now Joyce” or “take it easy” or even “fair play to you Joyce” and they left the office without her.  Not a bunch of flowers or a card, not even a gift voucher to say goodbye.  And Dan himself, the handsome clever son of Mr O’Sullivan senior, wasn’t even there.  She wanted to cry but decided not to.  She gathered the last of her personal items from her desk.  She turned out the office lights and locked the door and walked along the street alone.