There's three things that you should know about me. // One, / I was born in 1987. // Two, / I love hip-hop. // And three, / I'm a horrible boss. // I'm a horrible boss because I used to be a horrible employee. // Aside from my time in the Canadian Armed Forces, / I've never completely cooperated with the rules of my traditional workplaces. // The Monday to Friday, / 9 to 5 grind, / just isn't for me. // I'll never forget the last time that I was called out for being late at work. // It was very early in my career / and I remember showing up one morning at 9:15 am. // I casually strolled in only to find my boss standing beside my desk, / arms crossed, / tapping his watch in disapproval. // Hamza, / this is unacceptable. // I can't remember the last time you were here before 9. //// Well damn, / good morning to you too, sir. / Did I / miss anything? // Now of course I knew that I hadn't. // I'd been connected to my work in a dozen different ways. // Checked my calendar the night before. / I'd been on my email all morning. / I had my notifications on. / Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, our internal messaging system. // If my clients or my team wanted to get a hold of me, they would have already done so. // And that's when my boss hit me with this. // Hamza, / stock market opened 15 minutes ago. // What did my work have to do with the stock market? // This was a marketing agency. // I was doing graphic design. // I saw what was happening. // I was being sacrificed at the altar of office discipline. // So I asked a rhetorical question. // Did something happen that I should know about? // And of course I knew nothing had happened. / I'd been on Twitter all morning / and I looked at the trending topics and the only thing newsworthy // was Kanye West and Kim Kardashian attending a Jay-Z concert the night before. // And that's when my boss hit me with this. // Hamza, / you being late is bad for morale. // It looks like you aren't pulling your weight around here. // Oh! / That one stung. // That one hurt. // And that's the moment I decided to quit. // The insinuation that I wasn't producing because I wasn't physically tethered to my desk / was a bit too much for my pride. // Anyone who knows me knows that I'm highly productive. / I'm a consummate team player. // But apparently I didn't look the part. // So rather than go out with a dramatic bang, I left / with a little bit of a sneaky whimper. // For my last two weeks on the job, / I would show up early. / Show up every morning at 8:55 a.m. / And I would sit at my desk and do one thing / and one thing only. // I'm marathon movies. // Yeah. / Naturally, I started with The Godfather. / Great place to start. / I made my way over to Star Wars. // And what marathon would be complete without The Lord of the Rings? Extended version, of course. // Now every day I would leave at 5 p.m. // I'd pass by his desk at 5 p.m. and he'd go like this, / Hamza, / great job. // I literally sat there for 8 hours and I watched movies. I did nothing. // But that was enough for my boss. / And I swore from that moment onwards, / I'd never be managed again. // And managers have tried and managers have failed. // They've had to modify their management strategies and approaches with me. // And it's left me wrestling with the following paradox. // Organizations that are growing and achieving skill, / require management. // However, people, / myself, yourself, don't like to be managed. // Which begs the question, / can millennials be managed? Or better yet, / should millennials be managed?