There was plenty of bureaucracy in Rome (mostly to extract taxes), but there was relatively little direction of work - because Romans recognized that management costs more for no increase in productivity. At the least, the Roman masters had to provide fancier clothes to the overseers - who did no productive work - when the slaves were perfectly capable of doing the work without the additional expense of oversight. Moreover, you have to pay for management. Romans recognized that a manager - or even a master - had no practical experience doing the work and therefore was not the best authority on how the work should be approached. A Roman would have scoffed at Taylorism, in which every minute is ordered to achieve some theoretical maximum production, in which work is monitored by someone who does not do the work and is therefore not a practical expert at that work - a manager. They did the work and knew the best ways to order their days so it would get done. And in fact, it seems that many masters generally deferred to slaves in ordering the work because the slaves were the experts. As long as the work was done, it didn’t matter how. They lived at work, so to speak, but they did not do work every minute of every day. Most importantly, slaves set their own work schedule. They could marry and raise a family in relative freedom from want - relative, that is, to the working poor today. They had health care and proper rest time. They had clothing and places to live, unlike those who work for us. Master and slave both prospered when the slave’s needs were met. But the majority of Roman slave-owners probably treated their slaves at least as good as we treat our favored pets - for approximately the same reasons. I’m sure they didn’t care about the service, and the wealthy don’t suffer from bad publicity. This wouldn’t have have stopped the worst offenders. So masters suffered a lack of service and status if they were mingy and mean. It looked bad in public if your household was starved and abused, and the work a starved and abused slave does is not that great. But most slaves were more or less cared for their needs were met. They couldn’t up and move elsewhere, and there were some pretty nasty masters. But then again, slaves were part of the household, so there was less need for wages to pay for their needs. Now, there were no wages involved this was not paid time off - though there were gifts. We don’t even get bathroom breaks, never mind seven days. Actual slaves in Rome had more freedom than we do. Well, we would if our overlords would allow it.

Io, Saturnalia! Today we cast off the orders imposed on us from our parasitic overlords and do as we will.

Io saturnalia meaning