Everyone hates when you talk in the office

Hear that noise? It's the sound of your colleagues' productivity plummeting.

Quiet please.

The smack of eating, the slurp of drinking. Loud talking and louder laughing. Coughs that just won't quit.

Sounds fill the air in offices everywhere — and they are wreaking havoc on the workplace, worming their way into our brains, distracting us from our work, and darkening our moods.

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Alexis Boncy is special projects editor for The Week and TheWeek.com. Previously she was the managing editor for the alumni magazine Columbia College Today. She has an M.F.A. from Columbia University's School of the Arts and a B.A. from the University of Virginia.