I had been doing tech support for Hewlett-Packard’s DeskJet division for about a month when a customer called with a problem I just couldn’t solve.

She told me she could not print yellow.

All the other colors printed just fine, which completely baffled me, because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow.

For example, green is made from cyan and yellow—yet green printed perfectly.

Every color of the rainbow printed fine except yellow.

I had her change the ink cartridges.

I had her delete and reinstall the drivers.

Nothing worked.

I asked my coworkers for help, but they had no new ideas.

After more than two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell her to send the printer in for repair when she quietly asked,

“Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?”