Leaving card

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary
The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™


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Exit music for a film: the last great parlour game of multinational life. The coda to the farewell, wherein a big card and an envelope stuffed with loose change and ultra-low denomination notes is circulating for some departing soul you vaguely know from accounts.

The key is to sign, donate a crumpled fiver and flip quickly: no one wants to get stuck with the card late on a Friday, wherein an irate group secretary will hound you to return it on pain of evisceration — or worse, will fail to be on your case, leaving you with the problem of what to do with the blessed thing over the weekend. A hot potato of derisory but still, from the perspective of money had and received or even fraud, criminally significant value and which, in these days of clear desk policies and the like, it is signally hard to get rid of: you can’t just toss it on some poor random’s chair (compliance breach) much less drop it in an internal mail tray (they don’t exist any more), so you become some kind of constructive trustee.

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