fowl nest

[tomoffing]

"The line is actually "broilers" (birds bred for meat production as opposed to egg production)."

In what way are boilers (actually I would use the term fryers) like workers (outside of the rhyme)? I don't understand what they have in common. If you ask me they (the workers) are more like layers, plus you have already introduced them as egg layers. You can't have it both ways, one is a male, and one is female.

"crowing cockily of golden eggs
laid for the chief farming officer's audit."

Maybe you need to get a little better handle on chickens before you use them for a metaphor. The traits of workers is most like the female egg laying hen,

"Cooped in a cubicle"

However, historically "hens" have been linked to housewives, and so to me it is a tough sell to recast them as workers, yet the male who will be taken young for his flesh doesn't really seem like a worker as he is not cooped, he is penned. Only the roster crows and has typical male behavior, yet his life is pretty good, so he doesn't seem like a worker to me. To be consistent, you would need to pick one of the three, but you introduce characteristics of all three as if it were one thing, when they are not.

As to Chris, his metaphors are consistent, that is, the characteristics of the metaphorical object are not antithetical with what he is describing: they have an obvious commonality.

Dale

I'm familiar with chickens, it's my writing that's confused.

I am not trying to present a single office worker with the varying characteristics of three different birds. I'm attempting to convey three separate types of personalities encountered in an office environment, each with respective similarities to hens/cocks/fryers but all ultimately and inescapably beholden to the farmer.

In regards to the "golden eggs', I've never encountered any bird that lays golden eggs. only a deluded rooster would crow of such a thing.

Thanks again Dale,
I'll go back to the drawing board and get this right.