10 things to do on the last day of your career

By Sean Coughlan
BBC News Magazine

France's football hero Zinedine Zidane ended his glorious career in spectacular style - getting a red card for headbutting an opponent in the World Cup final. How are you meant to leave the office in a way that won't be forgotten? Here are some ideas...

1. Use your leaving speech to deliver a verbal Zidane-style headbutt. Affairs, expenses scams, inflated bonuses, wigs, how the place has gone to the dogs. Feel the room get colder than an eskimo's beer fridge as you give them your wit and wisdom.

2. Leave a challenge for your successor. When President Bush's staff took over the White House they complained that the Ws were missing from the computer keyboards (as in George W Bush) and that an office had been renamed Office of Strategerie.

3. If David Beckham can cry when he's leaving his job (as England captain) then so can I. Don't. Bad move. Nothing is going to fill an office with more horror than the prospect of Jeff from accounts showing emotion. It's not what open plan is about.

4. Leaving speech II. Talk at interminable length about your own glittering career - that time you really showed them who was boss over the faulty photocopier - and deliver rambling anecdotes about characters who left years ago. Just keep talking, it's your last day. What are they going to do? Sack you? You've listened to them for long enough. Look, I can just keep going...

5. Hand your identity dog tag to the craziest frother in the shopping centre and tell them where they can get free coffee and meet lots of new and hospitable friends.

6. The Mozambique chardonnay has all been drunk at the leaving party, they're playing the get-your-coat-on music ... and that special co-worker is just about to say a final goodbye. But it's never, ever a good idea to tell someone you've worked with for 20 years that you love them. Life isn't a Christmas special edition of The Office. It's much more cruel.

7. When you read your leaving card there's always a great big signature and a message from someone you've never heard of. Find out who they are and promise to meet them for a drink... since you're such big friends. It'll scare the hell out of them.

8. Check your e-mail in-tray for the bitchiest messages from your colleagues - you know, the ones slagging off people in earshot - and then threaten to send them out to the entire organisation. Watch your leaving present fund grow and grow.

9. Refuse to admit that you're leaving and just carry on as if nothing has happened and that you'll be there forever. This is technically known as "the Prescott".

10. That "exit" interview. This will be the first time you've come across the gleaming 20-storey office block occupied by floor upon floor of the "human resources" team. It's your big chance to tell them exactly... Are they listening? Hello?