feather-bed, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

feather-bed adj.

lightweight or easy-going as opposed to difficult or demanding, usu. of jobs; also describing the act of creating such easy tasks.

1935		Z.N. Hurston Mules and Men (1995) 63: The men would crowd in and buy soft drinks and woof at me, the stranger, but I knew I wasn’t getting on. The ole feather-bed tactics.
1938		S.F. Examiner 3 June 25: He does feel that ‘featherbed jobs’ [...] should be abolished.

In compounds

feather-bed soldier (n.)

1. (US) a soldier who avoids hard tasks; cite 1908 refers to a policeman.

1821		W. Read Rouge et Noir 117: [Notes] Gentle reader! [...] there was never a term of reproach so misapplied as the insulting one of ‘Featherbed soldiers’ to the officers of the Militia.
1883		Sweet & Knox On a Mexican Mustang, Through Texas 247: I’m no feather-bed soldier.
1887		E. Custer Tenting on the Plains (rev. edn 1895) 126: My husband [...] saying ‘the officers will surely think you a “feather-bed soldier”,’ which term of derision was applied to a man who sought soft places for duty and avoided hardships.
1895		Truth (Sydney) 24 Feb. 1/1: Our costly military staff-officers are more prone to the delicate dalliances of ‘feather-bed soldiers’ than to the arduous exploits of the tented field.
1898		Slade Murray [perf.] ‘The Charge of the 21st’ 🎵 Yet now they've won a deathless fame, the whole wide world knows how / You used to call them ‘feather-beds’, what do you call them now?
1908		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 Apr. 1/1: His life was saved by a featherbed hossifer who always carries a flask.
1914		J.H. Brinton Personal Memoirs 49: I am afraid that I was in some respects a ‘featherbed soldier.’.
1941		T. Wadelton My Father Is a Quiet Man 67: My father didn’t want to be a featherbed soldier. After a while he did get back to Camp Dix, New Jersey, and right after that he went to Europe.
1983		(con. 1776) W.M. Dwyer Days is Ours (1998) 4: With the new uniform and a title he adopted, ‘assistant adjutant,’ Private White proceeded to lead what he called the life of a ‘featherbed soldier.’.

2. a womanizer, a lecher.

1917

T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 37: There’s a feather bed soldier for your life.