Every trip has a group chat, and every group chat has the same six people in it, no matter who's actually in it. You've been more than one of these. We all have. Ranked here from mildly annoying to the actual reason your trip almost didn't happen.
6. The Spreadsheet Person
Made a tab-color-coded spreadsheet before anyone had agreed on dates, let alone a destination. Columns for flights, columns for lodging, a column nobody asked for that's just "vibes (1-10)." Deeply unnecessary. Also, secretly, the reason the trip has a budget that makes sense. We're ranking them last-in-chaos because they're the least chaotic, not because they're wrong.
5. The Budget Enforcer
Every suggestion gets run through a silent internal calculator before a response comes back. "That restaurant looks amazing" is met with "does it though" and a Google search for the average entree price. Not a bad instinct, somebody has to do this, but they will derail a genuinely good idea over twelve dollars, and you will let them, because deep down you know they're right.
4. The Over-Researcher
Forty tabs open. A Notion doc nobody else has access to. Has read more blog posts about this destination than the destination's own tourism board has published. Will send you a 600-word paragraph about the optimal neighborhood to stay in, unprompted, at 11pm. Cannot, however, actually book anything, because there might be a better option they haven't found yet.
3. "I'm Easy, Whatever You Guys Want"
The most dangerous phrase in the group chat. Says they have no preference. Has extremely strong preferences. Will veto three of the next four suggestions with a one-word response and no explanation, then go quiet again, waiting for someone to correctly guess what they actually wanted without making them say it out loud.
2. The Ghost
Active in the chat for the first six messages, when it was still exciting to talk about. Then nothing. Reappears nine days before departure to ask "wait are we still doing this" and "what do I need to bring," as if they have not been added to a group chat this entire time. Will show up to the airport on time regardless. Nobody knows how.
1. The Poll Creator
Creates a poll for the destination. Then a poll for the dates. Then a poll for "vibe of the trip" with eleven options, several of which mean the same thing. Nothing gets decided, because a poll isn't a decision, it's a way to defer one while feeling productive. Six weeks later the group chat has generated more polls than actual plans, and somebody else has to just pick something and say "okay we're doing this" for anything to happen at all.
The unranked seventh: the one who actually books it
Every trip has one person who reads all the chaos above, picks a reasonable option, and just does it. Books the flights. Reserves the place. Doesn't wait for consensus, because consensus was never coming. This person doesn't get a ranking because they're not part of the problem, they're the reason the trip exists at all. If that's you: we see you, and we're sorry.
This is also, not coincidentally, the exact chaos Routely is built to cut through. One shared map instead of a scroll of screenshots, spots anyone can add, and votes instead of a poll nobody answers. Doesn't fix the Ghost. Does fix everything downstream of them.
Ready to swap the group chat spiral for something that actually converges? See how it works.
