So next Thursday sees my last day in this job. And I am not looking forward to it.

It's been, by and large, a really nice place to work, with friendly people, flexible working and far too easy work. I'd hardly call it challenging, but it has been interesting and I've enjoyed my time here.

But that's not why I'm not looking forward to my last day.

What I am actually dreading is that horror of horrors that anyone who has ever left an office job is forced to experience: the Staff Leaving Ceremony.

That awkward half-hour or so at the end of the day when the entire office moves to crowd around your desk, proffering an oversized card incongruously featuring a teddy bear proclaming Sorry You're Leaving! that you'll be embarrassed at having to carry on the bus on the way home, together with a present that a few days before everyone was grumbling about having to fork out for as yet another brown envelope made its overbearing, guilt-inducing way around the office.

(A present that, incidently, most people are only interested in seeing in order to judge exactly how much the person who is leaving was really liked, by virtue of whether you have been gifted a 46-inch plasma screen LCD HD TV, or a used teabag that has been scooped out of the sink in the shared kitchen and cleverly passed off as a mantlepiece ornament, creatively decorated with a twisted paper clip stabbed in the top.)

When you're suddenly expected to revert to the favoured diet of a hyperactive nine-year-old and gobble down cheap crisps, Tesco Value mini sausage rolls and those slightly sweaty, sugar-coated, cream-stuffed cakes of the hippopotami-thighs-inducing ilk.

When your awkwardness will be compounded as you are coerced by your similarly awkward co-workers - some of whom barely knew you existed until an hour ago and certainly won't care once the next hour is out of the way - into making a farewell speech that will inevitably start with the phrase: "I hate making speeches..." and contain the lie "You've all been great to work with and I'll miss you all..." and will then be cut short in embarrassed acknowledgement of its inadequacy, leaving everyone standing around wondering what the point of that was, what to do next and what vital work they can invent as an excuse for getting back to their desks without revealing that they, too, hate these Staff Leaving Ceremonies and would far rather we all just went to the pub and got pissed in proper English fashion.

Yesterday I had this conversation:

"So, RTB, what would you like for a leaving present?"

"Erm... A pint?"

"Hahahaha! No, really - what would you like for a leaving present?"

"Really? Erm... Two pints?"

And then there was this little gem:

"Ooh, we'll have to think of some things that we can tell P for your song."

"My... what?"

"Oh, remember when so-and-so-whose-leaving-do-you-missed-because-you-didn't-like-her left and P brought his guitar in and invented a song for her?"

*cringes* "No."

"Ah. Well, he did. We thought it'd be funny to have one for you, too!"

"No. Please. No. I don't want a song."

"Ah-hahaha! Yes, it'll be funny!"

"No. I don't want a song."

"Ah-hahahaha! We'll see!"

"I. Don't. Want. A. Song. No. No. No. NO!"

And for those of you who might think that I'm overreacting slightly to the hideousness of having to sit on my chair in the office while everyone stands around and joins in with a song that far surpasses Happy Birthday To You in its unwanted-centre-of-attention-cringeworthiness, let me just reveal that P is this man...

Not exactly someone I want to be seranaded by, as I'm sure you'll understand.

Hm. Maybe I could call in sick...