Hold it for a week.

It's not always a waste of time to answer my landline. Sometimes it gets moments of genuine entertainment - say, shrieking "You're not my dad!" or just shrieking - and sometimes I get the incidental encounter that helps both parties.

For example, today I got a call from someone who I thought was a real person and was clearly asking for me, and pretty soon proved herself to be real. It turned out she was calling on behalf of a real company and had my number down because it was part of the staff contact information block from my old job with the worst boss I've ever had. I couldn't fault her on that, told her I had no hard feelings, and that she'd do well to contact her supervisor as well as the people at the current iteration of his workplace. She took it well, took my number off the roll, and we both moved on with our lives.