Dinesh's Setup Team

The daily job list for my tent house crew, so I can see who is at which shamiana before the tempo leaves the godown.

Who this is for

Dinesh Rathore runs a tent house off Sadar Bazaar in Meerut. Fourteen men, two tempos, a godown full of bamboo, red carpet and about forty shamiana panels. In wedding season there are three jobs in a day. The moment is twenty to seven in the morning, standing at the shutter with his tea going cold, eleven men waiting to be told where to go, and two of them asking him the same question twice.

How the job is done today

There is a long notebook with the week's bookings, written by his brother in pencil, and a WhatsApp group called Rathore Tent Party where Dinesh types the morning list at half past five. Half the men do not read it. The other half read yesterday's list by mistake. So the real system is shouting. He stands at the godown and calls out names, and then all day his phone rings. Which house in Shastri Nagar. Is Salim coming with us or with the other tempo. Who has the extra ropes. By evening he has told the same address to four different people and one tempo has still gone to the wrong lane.

The screens, in order

1. Today — Shows the day's jobs one under the other with the men's names below each one, in letters big enough to read at arm's length in the sun.
2. The job — Holds everything about one job, the party's name, the house or hall, the lane, morning or evening setting, and what has to be loaded.
3. Put men on jobs — Lets Dinesh move his men's names onto the day's jobs and see at a glance who is still standing free.
4. Coming days — Shows tomorrow and the rest of the week's bookings so he knows on Tuesday that Friday needs eleven men.
5. My men — Keeps the list of the fourteen, their phone numbers, and who is on leave this week.

What it keeps track of

• Men — name, phone number, which tempo he usually rides with, working or on leave
• Jobs — whose function it is, the house or hall and lane, which day, setting up in the morning or the evening, how many men needed, what to load
• Who is on what — which man, which job, which day, and whether he actually went

The one decision that matters

Should the list go out to the men, or should the men come to the list. Sending it means a message to each man at six in the morning. Coming to it means one page that always shows today, which Dinesh reads aloud at the godown and the men open on their own phones at the tea stall. It should be the page. Inside the bazaar with two generators running and a band practising in the next gali, nobody hears a phone ring, let alone a soft ping. And a message sent at six is buried under forty others by nine. A page that is right whenever somebody opens it beats a message that was right once.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out attendance and wages. It is tempting, because Dinesh pays his men by the day and keeps that in a separate diary. But the moment the page decides what a man earns, every wrong tap becomes an argument at the godown, and Dinesh will stop trusting it. Let the first version only answer one question, who is where. Money can stay in the diary until the list itself is believed.

How you would know it worked

By seven in the morning Dinesh's phone stops ringing. The men who used to call and ask which pandal they are on have already looked at the page over tea and walked to the right tempo, and the second tempo leaves loaded without him repeating the address a third time.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I have a tent house in Meerut and fourteen men who put up shamianas. Make me a website where I enter the day's jobs, the party's name, the house or hall and the lane, morning or evening setting, how many men and what to load, and then I put my men's names onto each job. The first thing it must show is today, in big letters, job by job with the names under each one, so I can read it out at the godown at quarter to seven and my drivers can open the same page on their own phones without any password. Let me mark a man as on leave so his name goes grey and I do not put him anywhere. Let me also look at tomorrow and the rest of the week. No alerts and no messages, nobody hears anything in this market anyway.