Ah, office life. Most people at some point in their working career will have had the joy of working in an office.

And along with the camaraderie and fun that goes with working closely with dozens of others for eight hours a day, comes the petty annoyances and irritating habits that make sharing a 100ft grey box with the same people day-in, day-out for most of your waking life sometimes unbearable.

It is a place where things that wouldn't bother you in the outside world become magnified to such a degree that you contemplate sending an angry email.

But if the daily gripes and minor irritations make you want to throw your computer out of the window, never fear. It seems you are not alone.

As these 10 things prove...

(Feel free to add your own office irritations in the comments below.)

Desk usurpers

Coming into work to find someone else sat at 'your' desk can be quite unnerving.

Are you on the wrong floor? The wrong office? Did those Friday night work drinks get as massively out of hand as you feared and you've actually been sacked and no one told you?

Chances are it's just simple 'hotdesking'. But it does mean trying to find somewhere else to sit. Somewhere that isn't strewn with weeks' old coffee mugs, discarded sandwich wrappers and a keyboard that looks like it's been used as a serving platter for Bombay Mix at an office party.

The rest of the day will be spent tutting, cleaning and continually disrupting (and apologising) to the person in your seat to get items out of your desk drawers.

So the next day you get in early to reclaim your throne. Only now you have to deal with all the clutter left behind, a sheen of unidentifiable grease on your armrest, and an angry office-wide email from the person whose desk you sat at yesterday, asking people NEVER to change their chair settings. Sigh.

Eating 'al-desko'

Many people don't get chance to have a proper lunch break, what with emails to reply to, phone calls to answer, Facebook to stalk. So you end up eating a sad-looking salad at your desk.

Only you can never find a fork, so you use your pen like a tiny spear and marvel at your Bear Grylls-like ability to adapt to office life. But you can guarantee as soon as you take your first bite, someone will appear, hovering next to you saying 'can I just borrow you for a minute?'

Three hours later, you return to finish your withered lunch. Only to find someone else sitting at your desk.

A person who will now be forever known as your office nemesis.

Unnecessary noise

Humming, singing, coughing, sniffing, nose-blowing, pen-clicking, aggressive typing, irritating ring tones, people bellowing into their phones...the list goes on.

Every noise in an office seems amplified by about a million, and everyone has their own personal breaking point.

But for many, the number one office gripe is noisy eaters. You know the people, those who can't seem to eat anything without making a racket.

Glugging tea, slurping soup, crunching boiled sweets, munching on crisps, celery sticks, apples. Even grapes - one of the least offensive office snacks - can sound like someone unblocking a drain in the wrong hands.

You can even hear them eating from the other end of the office. And every bite they take is like you're being Tasered in the face.

But you don't say anything. You just simmer in a silent rage, quietly eating a yogurt with a pen lid.

Smelly food

There are loads of different types of lunch food out there. Loads. But some are not suitable for the office environment.

Take hard-boiled eggs, tuna sandwiches and pickled onions for instance. They are perfectly acceptable in a picnic-type scenario, but bring them into work and it's basically a tribunal in a Tupperware tub.

The same goes for curries, greasy burgers and pizzas, anything with garlic in it, smelly cheese and warm cabbage. Eat any of these and you can guarantee that your co-workers have at some point fantasised about your death.

Oh and microwaving fish. WHO WOULD DO THAT? It's the office equivalent of someone coming into your house, being sick on your cat, and then wiping their shoes on your curtains.

Awkward conversations

'How was your weekend?'. The answer to this is 'Fine, thanks'. Not a detailed account of what you actually did. A lesson that is often learnt the hard way, when you see your co-workers putting on headphones, swivelling away in their chairs or getting up and leaving, as you get to your hilarious anecdote about what your cat did on Saturday night.

You also quickly get adept at avoiding eye contact, looking at the floor or pretending to check your phone whenever you're in a lift with someone else, waiting for the kettle to boil, loitering around the printer or walking to the bus, accidentally at the same pace as a fellow colleague.

Even worse is this exchange: 'Oh hi, are you new?'. 'No, I've worked here for 10 years, you sit behind me'. Silence.

The kitchen

Is this yours, Dave?

The place where the passive-aggressive note was born - the communal kitchen.

People dumping dishes, not unloading the dishwasher, spilling coffee all over the place, leaving food debris in the microwave, putting empty milk cartons back in the fridge, abandoning used tea bags in the sink. The list is endless.

Cubicle dwellers, it seems, have a different threshold for mess than other members of society. Yet it doesn't take long for the angry Post-it notes and emails to appear.

But perhaps the biggest shared kitchen sin is stealing other people's food. Sandwiches lovingly crafted at home suddenly vanish, leftover dinners disappear, and doughnuts - with one bite taken out - get put back in the carrier-bag laden fridge.

Cue another round of emails/notes.

Office whip-rounds

When you look at it, it actually costs you a fortune to work in an office. Every week there seems to be a collection going round for birthdays/retirements/leaving do's/new babies/sponsored bungee jumps. And you can never be the person who says no for fear of looking tight.

Then you have to buy cake for everyone else on your own birthday.

And you're constantly being asked to sign cards for people you have never met. So you end up doing a generic 'well done' with a smiley face, and realise too late that it's actually a get well soon card for Sandra from accounts who broke her leg in the office fun run.

Tea shirkers

There's always someone who shuns the tea-making round but always seems to have a nice, hot brew in front of them.

And when you ask them (through gritted teeth) if they want a cuppa they always say yes, and promise to make the next one, even though you know they don't have a clue where the kitchen actually is, despite working in the office for seven years.

And then there are those who 'don't like tea', have specific, printed instructions on how they like theirs made, or who keep a stash of secret tea bags in their locked desk drawers.

Baltic vs sweltering

Nobody is ever happy with the temperature in the office. It's either too hot - and people moan. Or too cold - and people moan.

But rather than doing something about it, people will angrily put on hats, gloves, coats and scarves and make a massive fuss about how freezing it is while miming exaggerated shivering.

Or, they'll switch on seven fans, continually wipe their forehead and say 'I'm sure it's too hot to work. It's illegal to work in certain temperatures you know. How hot is it? I think I've got heatstroke'. On repeat, for eight hours.

Reply all

There is nothing that induces panic and hysteria quite like an accidental 'reply all'.

Frantically hitting the return key, and whispering 'Oh God, Oh God' achieves nothing. Your reply, meant only for your Work Best Friend, has now been sent to 72 people.

And the group email chat - which has been pinging every 30 seconds for the last hour - goes silent.

The only thing you can do is sink into your chair, put your head in your hands and cry. Or get up, walk out, go to the airport, get on a plane, and never come back.

But then you get an email. ...and a glimmer of hope.

Except it's from the boss, with the two worst words that can ever be sent (after your own email, of course) 'see me'.

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