We IT folks are so used to that. First it started off with vibrating pagers which could lead to a condition we referred to as beepilepsy.
I'll never forget the day that my boss and I were in a boring meeting regarding moving our office. Had nothing to do with IT, we'd already fulfilled our duties. Now it was just fluff talk about paint colors, furnishings, etc. Boring!
About mid-way throught the meeting one of our servers decided to puke. We had SkyTel pagers so we both had ours go off at the same time. They say the looks on our faces were priceless. Woke us up out of a cold stupor and gave us an exceuse to leave the meeting.
Turns out the software that did the checking decided to hiccup so there was really nothing wrong. After that we'd start telling other members of staff to page us during meetings.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And now, that is done automatically on purpose. Got a call you want to ditch? Use call-waiting. Got a date you want to skip out on? Have someone page you, etc. PAT]