The numbers are down; the competition is high. Data is demure and playing it close to the vest. So they assign you a project that takes you three months of tedious spreadsheet work. But no one ever sees it because leadership changes course two weeks after you’ve docked and your little rows of cyber-work sit unnoticed in the darkness of their computers, dying on the pass like a souffle unclaimed in the back of a French restaurant. Next they ask you to set up a committee to restructure the product line and it takes up all your Saturdays to meet the deadline. But no one ever sees it. because unbeknownst to you and your piffling endeavors, you’ve all been circling the drain for six months now, soon be bought out, shut down or swallowed into the dark, wet plumbing of the toiling machine. Dig, trudge, grind, drudge through the cave-dark network, floating on the keyboard from one drain to the next.
Prompt: Write a poem using a professional phrase as a metaphor (thank god for tender mercies: an office prompt!)