What the desk is for
One question, answered in one second, by somebody with a queue behind them: can this person get in the water right now, and if not, what fixes it?
Desk (needs run_gate) takes a name, and answers with a colour, a word and a
reason.
Finding someone
Type the start of the last name under Find by name — "mar" finds Martinez and Marsh — then a space and the first name to narrow it ("martinez s" finds Sofia). A first name on its own finds nobody. Pick the person. The gate is asked about them straight away. A scanned card or a typed public id works too. The check-in records which way the desk found them.
Under the verdict, Recent entries lists the person's last few check-ins, each with the verdict it was written with.
If you hold read_medical_summary, the person's one-line medical summary
(140 characters at most — "Severe peanut allergy, EpiPen in bag") shows in an
amber box beside the verdict. For a household lookup there is one box per member
who has one, each with their name. It is never part of the verdict itself, so it
is not frozen onto the check-in, and the full medical file is not shown here.
The three lights
- Green — nothing needed.
- Yellow — action needed. Let them in, mention the thing.
- Red — blocked. The screen names the reason and the remedy.
Every verdict carries a word and an icon as well as a colour. Roughly one man in twelve working a front gate on a Saturday has a colour-vision deficiency, and "the light was red" is not a defence when a child got into the water.
Every red comes with a remedy
There is a rule in the model behind this screen: if nobody can act on it, it is informational. So every blocking and action-needed reason names a specific action a specific named party can take right now. A red reason whose remedy is "contact the club" is treated as a bug, not a valid state.
The remedy also says who — the desk, the family, the club admin, the board. So the answer to "why can't I get in" is never "the computer says no".
Overrides
Most reasons the desk can override with a recorded reason. An override is:
- Attached to a named person
- Limited to a number of uses
- Bounded by an expiry, capped by the club's own setting for a front-desk grant
- Audited, with your name on it
"Let them in this once" is what a desk actually means, and it should not still be true in September. An override downgrades a verdict — it never removes the reason and it never produces green.
Two things cannot be overridden at the desk. A suspended membership is a board decision. A caregiver not authorised for a specific child is the single question that record exists to answer.
Granting one
Next to a red reason that can be overridden, Grant override asks for:
- What was approved, and why — at least ten characters
- Expires — leave it blank for the club's front-desk maximum
- Uses — 1 by default; "let them in this once"
A reason about the family (a household waiver, a billing hold) is overridden for the household, so siblings arriving together are covered by one decision. Anything else is overridden for the person. A guest is overridden for the member's household. The desk then asks the gate again: the reason is still there, now yellow, and Let them in is offered. Two desks using the last use of an override at the same moment let in one person, not two.
Letting them in
After a lookup for a person with gate entry, the desk shows Let them in. It records one check-in per person, and the verdict is frozen onto it — the colour and the reasons as they were at that second. Fixing a waiver an hour later does not rewrite why somebody was let in at 4pm.
- Green or yellow is admitted. Yellow means mention the thing.
- Red is not admitted, and nothing is recorded. If a person should come in anyway, Grant override downgrades red to yellow and the desk asks again; then let them in. The check-in records that an override was used, and whose.
- A family arriving together shares one party. Keep letting people in, and start a new party for the next family.
- If the desk loses its connection, that is not a verdict. Retry — the same entry is never written twice.
Today at the gate
The desk shows "N checked in today · M still open" and the people still open, each with Check out. "Still open" is who nobody has checked out — nobody checks out of a pool, so it is an estimate, not a headcount, and it is never the number for an evacuation or a lifeguard ratio. Entries still open at closing time close themselves; that is recorded as an automatic close, not as a check-out.
Later
The self-service gate tablet, photo lookup, badge scan and the offline gate pack are the next phase. The desk does not depend on any of them.
A guest at the gate
Under A guest at the gate, find the pass a member issued by the start of the guest's first or last name. Only passes nobody has spent yet are listed.
Check asks the gate about that guest. It flags a banned-name match or a frequent visitor (yellow). It refuses a pass with no included allowance left, a family over the daily guest limit, a missing guest waiver, or a guest whose sponsoring member has not checked in today (red).
If the guest waiver is what is missing, the desk shows the club's guest waiver. The guest reads it and types their own full legal name, and the verdict is asked again with that signature. Two guests of the same member each sign their own.
Let the guest in spends the pass and records the guest's check-in in one step, with the verdict frozen on it. A red guest is not admitted and the pass is not spent. A sponsor who is parking the car is what an override is for: an override on the member's household lets the guest in yellow, on the record.
Do-not-release
After a lookup, the desk shows any contact restriction in force for that person — or, for a household lookup, for anyone in the family — in red, above the reasons: "Do not release to {name}", "Do not admit with {name}". It shows regardless of the colour of the verdict.
The verdict itself does not check restrictions yet. A green verdict is not an answer to "may this adult collect this child" — the red block is.