Skate is a term used when a sailor is trying their best to get out of work. They want to skate past it in one way or another. Then a skater is a person who does seem to get out of work all the time. They use any and all methods know to get out of doing things that others seem to get stuck with all the time.

Being labeled a skate is not a good thing. It is amazing how a reputation can beat you to a new command. A good reputation is hard to build, but a bad one can be made over night. During A school skaters were everywhere. They never wanted to do anything and always fell back on the story that they had to study. Some of these people were in for a rude awakening when they got out into the fleet. Others did their best t skate in the fleet. One guy even went directly into the oil lab on his ship thinking he could skate like in school.

During A-school we did have something nice called the 8 day skate. It was 8 days with out standing watch. They way our rotation worked out if you had duty on Saturday you also had it Sunday. So when it came back time to have it on Sunday, you were off, so 8 day skate.
Some people called the oil lab skater duty, but it wasn’t. 16-18 hour days are not what I call skate duty. Then add in the fact we had to refuel the ship while in port when the rest of engineering was off and things really looked down. Plus if you wanted to go anywhere in the GSM field you needed to have that oil king letter in your record.

Even out in the civilian world there are skaters, and I do not mean on the sidewalks. We all have them at work. They spend so much time looking busy and looking important they get nothing else done. So, I say to everyone who is a non skater, let them be, they will hit a pebble some time.