An extract from George O. Smith’s short story QRM INTERPLANETARY (1942), the first of his works about a space station set up to relay radio messages between Earth, Mars and Venus:

On Monday, Francis Burbank sent around a communique removing the option of free messages for the personnel. On Tuesday, he remanded the years-long custom of permitting the supply ships to carry, free, packages from friends at home. On Wednesday, Burbank decided that there should be a curfew on the one and only beer emporium. “Curfew” was a revision made after he found that complete curtailing of all alcoholic beverages might easily lead to a more moral problem; there being little enough to do with one’s spare time. On Thursday, he set up a stiff-necked staff of censors for the moving picture house. On Friday, he put a tax on cigarettes and candy. On Saturday, he installed time clocks in all the laboratories and professional offices, where previous to his coming, men had come for work a half-hour late and worked an hour overtime at night.

and about a month later it escalates to this conversation:

“Tell me first, from what source does Venus Equilateral get its fresh air?”

“From the air plant. And that is—”

“There must be more than one,” said Burbank thoughtfully.

“There’s only one.”

“There must be more than one. We couldn’t live if there weren’t,” said the Director.

“Wishing won’t make it so. There is only one.”

“I tell you, there must be another. Why, I went into the one up at the axis day before yesterday and found mat instead of a bunch of machinery, running smoothly, purifying air, and sending it out to the various parts of the station, all there was was a veritable jungle of weeds. Those weeds, Mr. Charming, looked as though they must have been put hi there years ago. Now, where did the air-purifying machinery go?”

Channing listened to the latter half of Burbank’s speech with his chin at half-mast. He looked as though a feather would knock him clear across the office.

“I had some workmen clear the weeds out. I intend to replace the air machinery as soon as I can get some new material sent from Terra.”

–

In 1942, George Smith was writing about MBAs trying to run technical operations. Pity nobody listened to him.

I understand every LLM has an MBA these days.