Arjun's Warehouse Roll Call

A photo of the supervisor's handwritten morning list turns into eleven ticks, a month of wages, and a phone number for the four o'clock delivery.

Who this is for

Arjun Reddy runs a second-hand furniture godown off the ring road at Uppal, Hyderabad. Two sheds, around forty pieces moving a week, eleven men who sort, polish and price, and two tempo drivers. At half past eight every morning his supervisor Salim writes the day's names on a ruled sheet and hangs it on a nail by the door. Arjun photographs it from his scooter before leaving for the auction yard. By the seventh of next month, he cannot say for certain who worked on the twenty-second.

How the job is done today

The sheet stays on the nail until it fills up, then goes into a drawer with the others. Arjun's photos of it sit in his phone gallery, between a picture of a teak almirah and a customer's torn sofa. On wage day he scrolls back thirty days, pinches into each photo, counts ticks with his finger, and argues with Salim about whether Ramesh came on the Tuesday it rained. When a delivery lands at four in the afternoon, he stands at the shed door and shouts to find out who is still around.

The screens, in order

1. The men — A one-time list of the eleven workers and two drivers, each with the nickname Salim actually writes, a phone number and a daily rate.
2. Morning photo — For putting the day's sheet into the site in the ten seconds Arjun has before he starts the scooter.
3. Mark the roll — Shows the photograph large with the saved names as buttons underneath, so a picture becomes a count of who worked.
4. Who is in the shed — Answers the only question that matters at four in the afternoon, which is who is present today and what their number is.
5. One man's month — Days worked, half days, and what is owed at his rate, so wage day is arithmetic already done.
6. The old sheets — Every original photograph kept by date, for the moment someone disputes a day.

What it keeps track of

• The men — name, the nickname on the sheet, phone number, daily rate, still working or left
• Day sheets — which day, the photograph itself, who took it, what time it went in
• The roll — which man, which day, full day or half day or absent, who marked it, when it was marked

The one decision that matters

The question is who reads the handwriting. One way, the site reads Salim's sheet by itself, fills in the attendance, and Arjun corrects what it got wrong. The other way, the site never tries to read anything: it shows the photograph large at the top, the thirteen saved names as buttons below, and Arjun taps. Go with tapping. Salim writes in a mix of Telugu and English, half the men are down by nickname, and Bhaskar and Bhaskaran are two different people who both lift almirahs. A wrong reading discovered on wage day costs more than eleven taps cost every morning. The photograph stays as the proof. The taps are only the count.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave the money out. No UPI transfers, no payslips, no advances or deductions. Arjun pays in cash on the seventh and trusts his own hand for that. What he does not have is a dependable count of days worked. Give him that count, correct, for two months running. Whether wages should move through the same site is a question he can answer properly once he believes the number it shows him.

How you would know it worked

On the seventh, Arjun sits down and settles all thirteen wages in one go without opening his phone gallery even once, and Salim is not called in from the shed to remember what happened three weeks ago.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a second-hand furniture godown in Uppal, Hyderabad. Every morning my supervisor writes on a ruled sheet who has come to work, about eleven men who sort and polish plus two drivers, and I take a photo of that sheet on my phone. I want a website where I put up that photo for the day, see it large on the screen, and tap each man's name below it to mark him full day, half day or absent, so the whole thing takes me half a minute on the scooter. Keep the photo saved against that date so I can show it if anyone argues later. Then give me one page for each man showing the days he worked this month and what I owe him at his rate, and one page showing who is marked present today with their phone numbers, so I can call someone when a delivery comes in at four.