skeleton crew

skeleton crew

The bare minimum amount of employees necessary to keep an office, business, service, etc., running at a basic level. We can't have a restaurant that is completely closed during the slow season, so we keep a skeleton crew on board to serve the few customers who decide to come in. The rigs will have a skeleton crew keeping them running until the company finishes handing over its business to the new owners.
See also: crew, skeleton
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a skeleton ˈcrew/ˈstaff/ˈservice

the minimum number of staff necessary to run an organization or service: At weekends we have a skeleton staff to deal with emergencies.
See also: crew, service, skeleton, staff
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • a skeleton crew/staff/service
  • Ba
  • hang a BA
  • hang a BA (at someone)
  • hang a BA at someone
  • hand-to-mouth
  • (from) hand to mouth
  • hand to mouth
  • hand to mouth, from
  • reassign to (something)
References in periodicals archive
Now it is down to a skeleton crew. We are all living in hope at the moment."
The skeleton crew left at the Racecourse had Easter weekend off and were due to report back for training today.
It is currently in a state of extended readiness, effectively mothballed with a skeleton crew, at Rosyth.
A skeleton crew of around 15 people will be kept on for essential maintenance as the trustees search for a viable financial partner.
"We're down to just a skeleton crew. Sale or liquidation looks like the only option."
Ron OJ Parson directs Northlight Theatres production of "Skeleton Crew," the third in Dominique Morisseaus three-play trilogy, "The Detroit Project." Set in a Detroit auto plant at the start of the Great Recession, "Skeleton Crew" chronicles workers dealing with a potential shutdown and job loss and a supervisor torn between loyalty to his colleagues and orders from management to cut costs.
Hadfield will head a three-man skeleton crew who will man the station until Nasa astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin arrive later this month.
Young Adam director David Mackenzie, 44, shot the T in the Park scenes with a skeleton crew - and thousands of unsuspecting music fans thought they were watching real bands play when they were really watching fictional groups from the movie.
Was it plague that left a ship with a 'skeleton crew' or were there more sinister forces at work?
Pavel Giroud's "Tres veces dos" and his latest pic "La edad de la peseta" are the prototype for the kind of features now being shot in Cuba with digital cameras and an agile skeleton crew. "Hopefully, going digital will bring our output up from the current four a year to 10 in the next four years," says Solas.
"All of the men on gardening leave plus the bulk of those who were kept on will be released today and a skeleton crew of 18 kept on at the colliery.
A flu bug, on top of a crippling injury crisis, has left Rush with a skeleton crew.
One other brother was torpedoed in Narvik in Norway and captured, but later managed to escape with other merchant navy personnel and sail home a number of captured ships laden with a skeleton crew on each.
Harry's skeleton crew - well, he always says they're down to the bare bones - have to scrap to stay up.
Meanwhile, there is always the 'ghost fleet' currently heading its toxic way towards Teesside from the USA, manned by a skeleton crew"