Yep, sometimes you wonder. I had a student ask me for a recommendation who I'd confronted about plagiarizing an assignment, and I had a dean of a college I hadn't worked at in years who thought it was a great idea to have me write a letter for a different former student to explain why some bureaucratic nonsense wasn't in the precise order the dean wanted it in. I did write both. The first was technically a recommendation and the second hopefully straightened out the student's problems. But I doubt either the student in the first case or the dean in the second got exactly what they were hoping for.