Jobs

Things that need doing. Somebody spots a broken gate latch on a Saturday; the person who fixes it turns up on Tuesday. That handover is what this list exists for, and it is the bit a whiteboard in the warden’s hut does worst.

Anyone who can see the site can report one — including a Viewer, who can write nothing else anywhere in the product. That is deliberate: the weekend warden who only needs to know who is arriving on Friday is exactly the person who walks past the broken gate, and if reporting needed a bigger role you would either lose the report or end up promoting everybody.

Prioritising, assigning and closing need a Helper or above. Reporting is open; triage is not.

The list is ordered by what has to happen first, then by what has waited longest — oldest at the top within each level, which is the opposite of most lists and the whole point. A job reported three months ago that nobody has done is the one most likely to be forgotten; putting the newest first would bury exactly what this is meant to rescue. Each job says how long it has been waiting, because that is the thing a whiteboard cannot tell you.

Four states and no more: reported, in progress, done, and won’t do — which needs a reason, because a job somebody decided against has to stop coming back without being quietly deleted, and the reason is the whole value of keeping it. Anything else worth saying goes in the job’s note. Job trackers get abandoned when they turn into project management.

A job doesn’t have to be anywhere in particular — “the track needs grading” is as ordinary as one against a single field. If a field needs taking off the calendar while the work happens, take a booking with no customer: that holds the dates exactly like a paying one, and is better than a second way of closing a field.