Over the past twenty years in performance testing a specific item type with distinguishing characteristics has arisen time and time again. It's been invented independently by dozens of test development teams. And yet this item type is not recognized in the research literature. This article is an invitation to investigate the item type, evaluate the contexts in which it may be appropriately used, and assess possible statistical and administrative ramifications of the item type. The nearest approximations to this item type in the literature are "non-compensatory items" or "conjunctive items," although for reasons that will become apparent it might be more appropriate to simply call them "gating items." Readers, researchers and practitioners are encouraged to address the issues of (1) How to evaluate and document the quality of these items for which traditional item statistics do not appear to be appropriate; and (2) How to incorporate gating items into the evaluation of the instrument.