Stage three, the gift itself, is where this page lives, and its neighbours both take the opposite tack. Keepsakes argues for the gift that stays. Quote prints works out how much of a borrowed line will actually fit.
The card is the right place for a joke, and the gift usually is not
A card is read once, in a room where the joke has an audience, and then it goes in a drawer. That is exactly the shape of a joke, and it is why a funny card next to a straight gift is a combination that rarely goes wrong. A joke printed on the object itself has to survive being read for the two-hundredth time, alone, in a kitchen.
Humour is not the problem; the surface it is printed on is. What to write in a retirement card covers the writing side, and it is the cheapest part of the whole thing to get right.
What we can and cannot print a joke on
Nothing here is a joke design. The name print sets four typed lines beneath a fixed "Happy Retirement" headline: their name, their profession, their years of service and where they worked. There is no joke template and no box for a punchline.
What that leaves is dry rather than loud. The profession line takes up to 40 characters of whatever you type, and the years line up to 20, so "PROFESSIONAL TEA MAKER" or "38 YEARS, NO SICK DAYS" prints exactly as entered, in capitals, under their name. It reads as a straight record with one word out of place, which is the kind of joke that survives a fortnight. It's also the kind that can go wrong, so read it back before you pay: we typeset what's entered, and nobody checks it for tone.
What each option costs
At A4 the print is £14.99, at A3 £28.99. The mug carries the name and the profession-and-years line for £16.99; the water bottle does the same for £28.99. Delivery within the UK is included in each of those.
If the funnier gift is a picture rather than a line, the portrait offers five painted styles. A photograph of them in the uniform they are about to stop wearing lets the picture carry the joke. Check the preview allowance on the upload page and judge the result before committing £19.99 to it.
Who is in the room when it is opened
Two things narrow the choice. If family are present, an office in-joke excludes most of the people watching. If the career was long and the person is quiet about it, a joke can read as though nobody could think of anything to say about the work.
Where either is true, the straight version does more: the two ways to personalise sets out both of them, and who is retiring is the better starting point if the person rather than the format is the harder question.
