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When the Blackberry service went dead last week, many people felt helpless and disconnected. Patrick Tuite likely wished the outage had extended to cellphones in general.

A lawyer representing John Boultbee, who is being tried along with Conrad Black in Chicago, Mr. Tuite was at the mercy of the court last Tuesday when a cellphone in his possession kept ringing with the theme from The Exorcist. The judge confiscated the phone and put it in her office, where one assumes it continued ringing and speaking in tongues.

Mr. Tuite can take comfort in a 2007 survey of British cellphone users by phone retailer Dial-a-Phone: 44 per cent of them admitted to committing a "ring-tone faux pas."

And in a 2006 poll of U.S. workers by staffing company Randstad USA, 30 per cent listed shrill, ringing cellphones as their biggest office pet peeve.

While movie theatres, schools and other public places make a point of telling people to turn off their phones, the office remains the haunt of flagrant phone ruffians.

People take calls or answer e-mail during meetings.

Some cannot bear to remove their Bluetooth headpiece for even a second; others talk at a perfectly normal level on an office phone only to bellow on their cell as if trapped at the bottom of a well.

Not surprisingly, all seem partial to ridiculous, loud ring tones.

"My ring tone is the quietest one possible," says Adeodata Czink, a Toronto etiquette coach and president of Business of Manners.

"The Exorcist was funny but not appropriate."

Ms. Czink says phones should be turned off in all meetings unless you're expecting an urgent call, and the choice of a ring tone is just as important as the volume.

Keep it low and unobtrusive, she says. Try the vibrate setting.

Remember that a ring tone says something about you, and that something is often mouthed from behind your back.

Now that's something to be scared of.

Craig Silverman is a Montreal-based writer and the editor of RegretTheError.com. His first non-fiction book will be published by Penguin Canada in the fall.