A fork of Rural Dictionary
Refers to either of two strategies for reducing the distress/fatigue/boredom of performing an extra-disagreeable task; you either "layer" the labor --- i.e., perform a few minutes' work on the yucky job, then go do something else for a while, then return and work some more on the drudgery-task, then take another break with less-agonizing labors to again relieve your feverish emotional suffering, and so on --- like the cheese and lunch-meat in a sandwich, or else you "poke holes" in the disgusting task --- i.e., perform one or more smaller random bits of the job at a time as your gumption permits, so that the overall endeavor becomes more and more "fragmented and hollowed" (like the holes in Swiss cheese) as time goes on --- until the task eventually gets wholly completed by being gradually-but-steadily "chipped away at" over the course of a few days until it's all gone.
I soooo didn't wanna clean out all da musty crap in da storage-shed out back... the task seemed just too daunting and tedious to try to tackle all in one go. So I decided to Swiss-cheese the job instead --- just kinda "picking at the edges" of the jumbled heap over the course of a couple weeks --- and eventually I had the entire pile removed and the floor nicely swept out again.
To be beyond all hope. At the end of you rope with nowhere left to go. A desperate feeling in a hopeless situation.
After John's family was killed and he lost his house, he felt like swiss cheese with no bread to land on.