Voice on the other end asked for the wife.
?
No identification of who is calling, just asked for the wife.
I asked who is calling?
---I just wanted to know if I have the correct number.---
The conversation went downhill from there.

Okay.
Last time I checked,
You dial a number and the other person answers.
You state,
"Hi This is Billy Bob from the South Pole and I'd like to speak to Herman Marx about some penguins."

Not this carp of "Is Joe Baloney there?"

Am I wrong?

I usually don't answer the phone just to avoid "secret" people.

When my daughter's friends would call and begin the conversation with, "Is so and so there?" I would reply with yes or no, and then I would hang up. It did not take long to train them.

I always introduced myself when I worked for a living. And I still do. That gives the person the option of telling me to get lost.
Other day I had a legit call with the ombuds ( note the change in spelling ) from a major insurance company. He had done his homework and was polite. But I did tell him I was having trouble understanding his speech over the phone.
Island Mike

One of the things I miss about my mother (passed in 2018 at age 91) is her ability to make a telemarketer sorry for calling. If a live person called, she was very careful to never say the word "yes" or anything that could be reformatted to mean "I'll take it". She would keep them on the phone, asking things like "are you married?" or "have you found Jesus?". Sometimes she would start talking about what she did in 1940 for fun, anything to keep them from calling some other poor soul. Many times they simply hung up and as far as I know, never to call back again. At times she got a little snippy too: I heard her ask for a phone number so she could call them back at their home and bother them like they were bothering her.

We have to answer the phone at work, we do not have caller ID. Many telemarketers call there all the time. I often ask for their "English speaking supervisor", that usually gets a dial tone. My most used response is "Thank you for calling, please do so again" and hang up before they can answer. Of course, now the calls are recordings, taking the fun out of saying anything. They start with "Do not hang up..." I don't follow orders well....