Sanjay's Route Pairs

Sanjay and his dispatcher pass one phone back and forth at night, matching each driver to the regulars he usually picks up.

Who this is for

Sanjay Bhoir runs eleven taxis from a one-room office near Dwarka Circle in Nashik. Nine drivers, around forty regulars: three school runs, a dialysis patient every Monday and Thursday, a wine shop owner who goes to Mumbai on alternate Thursdays. His dispatcher Rekha holds all of it in her head. The moment this lands is half past nine at night, when the rush is over, there is one cutting chai each and one working phone between them.

How the job is done today

The pairings live in Rekha's head. There is a school notebook with pencil arrows from names to names, rubbed out and redrawn whenever a driver changes shift, and nobody but Rekha can read it. There is a WhatsApp group where drivers send "reached" and nothing else. When Rekha takes leave for a wedding, Sanjay rings her at her mother's house four times in one morning to ask who fetches the Deshpande girls at 7:40 and whether Imran or Salim knows the Ambad factory gate. Twice this year a regular waited, gave up, and started calling a different fleet.

The screens, in order

1. Pass the phone — Sets up the two of them for a round and tells whoever is holding the phone that it is their turn to flip.
2. The board — Shows face-down cards of drivers and regulars so the person holding the phone turns two and tries to put the right rider with the right driver.
3. That one is Salim's — Comes up on a wrong match and quietly shows who the regular actually rides with, along with the usual day and pickup time, so the mistake teaches something.
4. Gone quiet — Collects the regulars nobody has matched or driven in a few weeks, so the two of them can decide who rings Mrs Kulkarni before she settles with someone else.
5. Add to the deck — Lets them put in a new regular or move a rider to a different driver right after the round, while the day is still fresh.
6. How we did — Shows the pair's score for the round and the handful of pairings they keep getting wrong, so tomorrow night starts there.

What it keeps track of

• Drivers — name, the car he drives, which shift he works, phone number, on leave or not
• Regulars — name, where they get picked up, where they go, which days, usual time, how they pay, when they last rode
• Pairs — which regular, which driver, since when, is this the main driver or the backup, how often the two of us got it wrong
• Rounds — which night, who was holding the phone, how many matched, which pairs were missed
• Calls to make — which regular, why they came up, who is calling, called or not, what they said

The one decision that matters

One score for the two of them together, or Sanjay against Rekha. Competing sounds more fun and it is the obvious way to build a matching game. It is wrong here. Rekha already knows every pairing; if she is playing to win she has no reason to say the answer out loud, and the whole point is that Sanjay ends up knowing it too. Give them a single shared score for the night, and let the person not holding the phone speak up freely. The game should reward the two of them getting each other over the line, so a round becomes Rekha teaching Sanjay without either of them calling it that.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out messaging the customer from inside the app. The gone-quiet list should end with a phone number that opens the dialler, nothing more. Sanjay ringing Mrs Kulkarni himself at ten in the morning is the thing that saves the account; an automatic message is the thing she ignores. Also leave the drivers out entirely for now. Nine more people playing means nine more people to explain it to, and the two who need to agree are sitting in that room.

How you would know it worked

Rekha goes to her cousin's wedding in Aurangabad for four days and her phone stays quiet. Sanjay works out the 7:40 school run, the Monday dialysis pickup and the Ambad factory gate on his own, and she comes back to find nobody was left standing on the road.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run eleven taxis in Nashik with nine drivers and about forty regular customers, and only my dispatcher Rekha knows which driver picks up which regular. Make me a small matching game the two of us can play at night on one phone, passing it to each other, where you flip a driver card and a customer card and try to pair them up. If we get it wrong, show me who that customer actually rides with and on which day and at what time, so I learn it. Keep one score for both of us together, not one each. At the end of the round show me the regulars nobody has matched or driven in a few weeks, with their phone numbers, so I can ring them in the morning. Let us add a new customer or change a customer to a different driver right after we finish playing.