snakes and ladders

snakes and ladders A children's luck-based board game played on a numbered grid, the aim of which is to proceed to the end, and in which ladders aid progress and snakes impede it.
puhekieltä any situation in which people or events go forward and backward, seemingly at random
1970, w:New Scientist|New Scientist, Volume 45, Issues 682-694, page 493,

Teachers, senior teachers, and principal teachers would have built-in status and the scales would offer well-defined career prospects instead of the ambiguous and often misleading snakes-and-ladders situation which at present exists.

His Mireille has had a snakes-and-ladders career, starting up, going down, then finally rising once more.

But his snakes and ladders career would soon take its biggest hit.