Foe

Novelette by Mark Rich

A humorous piece about a bureaucrat sent to be the Face of Efficiency for a settlement on Mars. He has no idea what this entails, but knows that 16 people have been fired from that job in the last 30 years. He decides he can't possibly succeed, so might as well get it over with ASAP. But while trying to get fired, he accidentally does his job far better than any of his predecessors. This left me smiling afterwards, but the premise was stretched a little too thin at times - I don't think a reasonable person could have believed they were still failing miserably after a point about halfway through, and yet he keeps trying to "fail". Makes a good point about efficiency though. 3 out of 5 Martian settlements could do without a F.O.E.