I have finally figured out what it is that really annoys me about Howdy. And it�s not even the constant greetings.

It�s that she�s perky and completely insincere.

Perky I can cope with if I have too. Even first thing in the morning when I�ve been at my desk for half an hour and she rolls in right on 9am with a loud and perky �Helloooo� with (and I admit this may just be me) an air of expectation that her presence in the office should somehow be celebrated with an equally perky greeting or at least some acknowledgement of how my life is improved by the event.

But I can cope with that. Be a bit resentful and deliberately anti-perky, but cope.

Yet there�s something else that grates on my more, and I couldn�t quite get a fix on what it was until a couple of days ago when I overheard a conversation between Howdy and Priscilla.

Priscilla had received a mid-morning phone call from a friend and had been on the phone for a maximum of five minutes. We don�t encourage lengthy personal calls outside lunch breaks, but we�re not Nazis about it either. Both the Boss and I are known to chat with friends, and really it�s a pretty relaxed office. If it doesn�t interfere with the work then it�s not a problem, and Priscilla has always been very diligent about making sure that this particular friend, a known chatterbox, only calls during lunchtime. The phone call was an anomaly, and frankly I hadn�t even noticed until Priscilla got off the phone and Howdy, in her usually perky style, said the following:

�In my family we don�t call people at work unless it�s an emergency. On the mobile maybe, but never at work because it�s so disruptive.� Perky, perky, smile, smile.

Priscilla gave an appropriately non-responsive response and then Howdy kept going:

�Yeah, if someone in my family got a call from me during the day they�d think I was in hospital or something. It�s just the way I was brought up.� Perky, perky, smile, smile.

And I held my tongue and realised what it is about her that annoys the crap out of me. She is completely and utterly insincere.

In my view she had two sincere options at the end of Priscilla�s call. 1. Be prissy and say that she didn�t think personal phone calls were appropriate in the middle of the morning. 2. Shut the fuck up because it�s none of her business. But no, she goes for the least sincere response possible: a friendly, conversational attempted smack-down that includes heavy �I�m right and you�re wrong� and �I�m so much better than you� undertones.

Of course now that I�ve realised what it is, I find almost everything she says lacking in any sincerity. Mainly because instead of expressing grumpy or angry or any of those other normal emotions, she apparently feels the need to cover everything in perky. I�m not sure if it�s born of insecurity or superiority, but either way I really wish she�d get over it and herself.

The other thing she does, again covered in perky, is complain about how hard everything is. I think there�s an underlying resentment that she gets a lot of the crap jobs, or at least the jobs that can�t be done in five minutes, while the Boss and I do other things. Of course, there�s a reason for that � she�s the Trainee! We�ve got years more experience, much of it gained by doing the crap jobs and going through training ourselves.

Now, in her defence, she does indeed do the work. She just does it with tons of complaints covered either in perky or professed headaches.

Everything does not simply happen for you! You have to work for it! We do not have to be thrilled by your mere arrival in the office. Especially not when we�re not awake yet. Urrgghhh!

Though, at least she�s not my mother�