A large number of telemarketers have no idea who they are calling until the party answers and the name shows up on a caller ID sort of system on their computer screens. The calls are dialed automatically by their telephone system. For instance, if the last four digits of your number are 1234, the next number to be called will be 1235.

Unfortunately, I became all too familiar with telemarketers and their hows and whys while I was working for an answering service. We had all numbers through several sequences for our client accounts, and the operators suffered through hours of automated calls coming into our trunk lines in sequence. Sometimes we played little games with the callers, but our powers that were became a bit disenchanted and forced us to stop.

I don't care why they are doing it, I usually yell, "NO, bad dog!" Then I blow a whistle into the phone and hang up.