I've spent over 30 years managing large government operations. One lesson I carry with me comes from the retirement years ago of an employee most would have considered “obscure.” He was a quiet man — arriving each morning with his sandwich, working steadily, and leaving without much fanfare. To many, he seemed part of the furniture. It was only when he left that we truly realized his value. Over the years, he had accumulated deep, almost invisible knowledge. He had taken on countless menial but essential tasks simply because he had the experience to do them well. He was, in many ways, the oil in the machine. His departure forced us to scramble. We suddenly saw how many small, critical pieces he had been holding together — pieces no job description had captured, and no system had tracked. Since then, I've often thought of him when I see organizations subjected to blind cuts. The true cost of such decisions is rarely visible on a balance sheet: it’s in the loss of quiet expertise, institutional memory, and the small acts of continuity that keep complex systems running.