Suresh's Gate Pass Board

The maid and the milkman tap through our gate at seven in the morning, because security already knows who they are.

Who this is for

Suresh Pawar has stood at the morning gate of Shantiniketan Residency in Kothrud, Pune for nine years. Eighty-four flats, two guards, one register. Between 6.45 and 7.45 he handles the milkman, the newspaper boy, four cooks, eleven maids and the dhobi, while cars are backing out for school drop. That single hour is the whole job. By nine he has time to make tea.

How the job is done today

There is a long register on a plastic stool. Name, flat, in-time, signature. Suresh writes while the next person waits. If he does not recognise someone, he rings the flat on the intercom, and at seven in the morning half the flats do not pick up. The society WhatsApp group has a hundred and ninety members, and every few days someone types that a new cook is starting from Monday, please allow her. That message is under eighty other messages by the time Suresh looks. So the maid stands at the gate, someone shouts from a third-floor balcony, and the queue behind her grows.

The screens, in order

1. Morning gate list — Shows Suresh the faces of everyone expected at the gate in this hour, big enough to tap without squinting.
2. Person card — Confirms in one glance that this is Ratna who works in B-402, and marks her in with a single tap.
3. Not on the list — Handles the person standing at the gate who nobody registered, by taking a name and number and ringing the flat.
4. My helpers — Lets a family register their maid, cook or driver once, with a photo, the days she comes and her usual time.
5. Who came to my flat — Gives a family a plain running list of who entered for their flat and at what time.
6. Society list — Lets the secretary add flats, add guards, and remove helpers who have stopped working here.

What it keeps track of

• Helpers — name, photo, phone number, which flat or flats, which days she comes, roughly what time
• Flats — flat number, who lives there, which phone numbers should be told when someone enters
• Entries — who came in, for which flat, at what time, which guard tapped them through
• One-time visitors — name, phone, which flat they asked for, whether the flat said yes, what time they came
• Guards — name, phone, which gate, which shift, so the right list opens on the right phone

The one decision that matters

Does every entry need the family to say yes, the way the intercom works now, or does a helper registered once walk in on a single tap with the family told afterwards? Go with the tap. At 7.10 there are nine people at the gate, and forty approval requests sent to sleeping flats will have Suresh back on the register within a week. The safety sits in the list itself: only a person a family put there can be tapped through, the family sees the entry on their phone within seconds, and they can have her removed the same morning. Keep asking first only for people who are not on the list at all.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out out-times and monthly reports. The out-time column in the register was always half empty and nobody ever read a report from it. Also leave out delivery riders and parcel boys. They are different people every day, they would swamp the morning list with strangers, and the intercom already handles them at the hours they actually come. The first version only has to survive one hour.

How you would know it worked

By the second week Suresh does not open the register during the morning hour at all, and nobody in the society WhatsApp group is asking the guard to please allow their maid.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I am the secretary of a housing society in Pune with eighty-four flats and two guards. Between quarter to seven and quarter to eight our gate jams up with maids, cooks, the milkman and the dhobi, and our guard Suresh has to write each one in a register and ring the flat on the intercom. I want a phone app where each family registers their maid or cook once with a photo, her days and her usual time, and then Suresh opens his phone at the gate, sees the faces of everyone expected in that hour, taps one, and she walks in, and the family gets a message that she has come. For anyone not on that list he should still be able to note the name and phone and ring the flat as before. It has to work on a cheap phone and be readable in sunlight.