NEW YORK, US - A political coup in New York's statehouse can be traced back to an incident in which a top lawmaker so enraged a wealthy backer by peering at e-mail messages on his BlackBerry that his patron engineered his ouster.

One of the newer forms of poor office etiquette - paying more attention to a handheld device than to a conversation or business meeting - happens so frequently that businesses are complaining that it upsets workplaces, wastes time and costs money.

A third of more than 5,000 respondents said they often checked their e-mail messages during meetings, according to a March poll by Yahoo! HotJobs, an online jobs board.

Such habits have their price, said Mr Tom Musbach, the senior managing editor of Yahoo! HotJobs.

'Things like BlackBerries fragment our attention span, and that can lead to lost productivity and wasted dollars because people aren't focused on their work, absolutely,' he said.

In other Yahoo! HotJobs research, nearly a fifth of the respondents said they had been reprimanded for showing bad manners with a wireless device. Yet, even those who railed against such behaviour admitted to their own weakness.

'I catch myself driving in the car with my husband. He's talking to me, and I'm downloading my e-mail' said Ms Jane Wesman, a public relations executive and author of Dive Right In - The Sharks Won't Bite. But the constant pursuit of an e-mail fix may be costly. Research shows such multi-tasking can take more time and result in more errors than does focusing on a single task at a time.

Then, there is the risk of making someone really mad.

In the New York state political coup, billionaire businessman Tom Golisano said he grew angry after his spring meeting with state Democratic majority leader Malcolm Smith, who paid more attention to his BlackBerry than to issues at hand.

'I thought that was very rude,' Mr Golisano told statehouse reporters. He is known for hefty campaign contributions and for funding his own unsuccessful bids for governor.

Irked by Mr Smith's behaviour, Mr Golisano reportedly approached other legislators, who earlier this week voted out the Democratic leadership and voted in the Republicans.

'One should not play with one's BlackBerry (or anything else) when billionaires who have helped elect you have travelled to your office to talk to you,' Mr Henry Stern, the former head of New York City's parks department, wrote on a Yonkers Tribune blog.

REUTERS