Not even for a free lunch??!
I filed my retirement request a year in advance (the maximum at the time) and had it approved within 60 days. BUPERS, caught absolutely flat-footed by the idea of a guy retiring when he's required to, scrambled madly for 11 months before telling us that there wouldn't be a relief for another three months past my retirement date. I started terminal leave in late February and retired on 1 June, so a junior officer dusted my desk until September. Of course I'd cleaned out all the files, put together a six-page tutorial & turnover letter, and trained everyone in sight on how to do my job. They all probably rotated shortly after that.
The following March I was invited to lunch by my "relief", who wanted to ask me a few questions that no one had been able to answer. We agreed upon a time and place. I showed up on time, visited friends for 30 minutes without him putting in an appearance, and left him voicemail that we'd chat later.
He called back a couple hours later-- he'd forgotten that he'd made the lunch date and had wandered off to do other things. (Guess those issues weren't so earth-shattering after all.) He asked a couple questions that were answered by referring to the turnover I'd left behind.
Got another call six months later. They were in the final [-]spasms[/-] throes of preparing for the big nuclear inspection but he still hadn't been able to get at "his" reference material in the classified safe. It turned out that he hadn't changed the safe combination when he'd taken the job, he hadn't thought to look up the combination in the CDO's safe, and no one had changed my combination since I'd left. Luckily I still remembered it.
A year later one of my old shipmates got the billet. When he called me up to buy me lunch, we dealt with the job issues in about 10 minutes. It turned out that the real reason he'd called was to verify the rumor that I was completely retired. We spent a good hour mapping out his own personal ER timeline, budget, & asset-allocation plan... he'll pull his own plug in a couple more years.
Sometimes I'm tempted to go by my old office and see if I can still open "my" safe. But I think I've finally moved on...