Hertzberg Boss Index Origins
My cousin Geoff and I were travelling through Germany on cheap bikes we bought in Stuttgart with plans to sell the machines at the end of our ride.
We were riding and drinking through the last of Geoff's severance package from Job J.
He would be starting Job K in a few weeks and wanted to do something memorable before heading back to the trenches.
We were off the main roads and found a room at the Hotel Zum Paradies in Herzberg am Harz, Germany.
Geoff was enjoying a local ale and I had a pilsner that I can't remember the name of.
Our legs and backs were sore but the comfy chairs and the strong ale soon melted those feelings away.
Discussion soon drifted to the many jobs we had both enjoyed, learned from, tolerated, slaved at or were fired from over our stormy careers.
One boss that we both knew, that Geoff had worked for in the dark past, came up with a clink of our glasses as an Asshole while others were noted as Tolerable or Fine.
We readily agreed that Angels we rare in our field but they did exist.
With many simple, descriptive words at the fore, and many years of similar career experience between us, I came up with the Hertzberg Boss Ranking Index.
Geoff shortened a bit and we both agreed on removing the Ranking term and it became the Hertzberg Boss Index.
Many scientific scales are of European origin and the town where we had stopped for the night provided a fitting name for what has evolved into the HBI.
We were happy with the words we finally chose and Geoff came up with the idea of using numbers, in what we thought was the typical German way.
He thought it might be easier, at work and other public places, to refer to someone as a -2.5, a zero or a +7.5 rather than using the actual words.
In that way people could talk easily about someone being a -7.5 or a +5 too.
My original thought was to use single words, like Angel and Asshole for each rank level, but found that were stuck not having an English thesaurus handy in a German bar....
Another round was ordered as our desire to finish the index overrode our hunger and need to order food.
I called my next ale "pretty good" and that term became the 5.0 ranking even though it broke the original rule.
Good, strong beer on an empty stomach does that.
Things may change as this list hits the web.
Enjoy and use it the way it is now; either the numeric rankings or the powerful words.
The Hertzberg Boss Ranking Index is almost ready for the world to use in whatever way you want.
Share a link to this site with as many people as you can and return regularly to watch how it evolves!
