For three months at my first office job, I thought a coworker named Dale was the building’s IT guy. He fixed my printer once, so I kept emailing him tech problems. He kept solving them, because he was polite and vaguely competent. Then at the holiday party someone introduced him as the regional VP of sales. I had been sending a vice president screenshots titled “printer angry again.”

The worst part is he never corrected me. When I asked why, he said fixing my printer was the only part of his week where success was measurable. We stared at each other, two people who had each misunderstood the other into a better work life. I got my tickets resolved in minutes. He got small wins that quarterly revenue never provided. HR eventually made us stop, which I still consider their worst decision.

Somewhere out there, Dale is closing deals and missing my printer. The printer, for the record, misses him too.