I have spent most of the week trying to balance competing feelings of empathy and sadistic glee.

The Boss and Howdy have been working on a major, urgent and deadline-heavy project which essentially takes up all of Howdy’s time and three quarters of the Boss’s.

It’s the kind of project I hate. It’s fast and lucrative and difficult and frustrating and up until Howdy’s arrival something I would have been running. It’s the kind of project that is challenging and puts your training to work, but which also requires a lot of filing, photocopying, collating and general document management. And it means dropping everything else you’re doing, including lunch breaks and going home on time.

So I am extremely empathetic when I see Howdy running around with a manic expression on her face trying to find an attachment to a document, or trying to find a moment to catch her breath. I have been there. No doubt I will be there again, and possibly very soon.

But at the same time, I’m kind of enjoying it. I’m trying not to enjoy it too much because I know the karma will come back and bite me in the arse and make my next project horrific, but it’s hard to help it on a couple of fronts.

First, after several months of being the busiest person in the office by a long way, it’s nice to have time to get through my stuff while everyone else is being swamped. At least for a few days. But second, and more importantly (which is why I’m wary of that karma thing), I can’t help but conclude that this is exactly what Howdy and her unprofessional sense of entitlement need.

We are not slave drivers around here. For most of the year she’s had the very un-trainee like luxury of working from 9 til 5.15 with a full hour for lunch. And this, unfortunately, only added to her pre-existing sense of entitlement. But over the last couple of weeks she’s been learning that when the project needs it you get a 15 minute fresh air break at 4.30 rather than an hour off at 1, and you get in at 7 or 8 instead of 9 and leave at 7 or 8 instead of 5. Sometimes it’s just necessary. Of course she only got in at 8 one day this week, which means she’s had more late nights that she’d otherwise like because she hasn’t managed to balance out her day.

Of course, because it’s such a whirlwind in the middle of the project, we won’t actually know for a few weeks whether the lessons have been learned. It won’t be until the whole thing is over that it will become apparent whether she’s really up to the job or not.

And by that time I’m likely to be in the middle of my own project, which will likely require me to travel back and forth between two states and be wholly frustrated by a couple of other parties. But at least I know what to expect, what’s required and how to handle it all. And I’m prepared to have it be just that little bit worse because of the flashes of glee I can’t help feeling now. Especially this afternoon when I headed off to lunch at the pub with the girls from the office and Howdy ran back and forth collating and filing documents.