Okay, so today I wanted to mess around with creating a roster, like a shift schedule, specifically for something Wales-related. I’ve been watching a lot of Welsh football lately, so that’s probably why it popped into my head. I didn’t have any specific requirements, just wanted to see if I could build something basic from scratch.
Getting Started
First, I needed to decide what information I wanted to include. I figured the basics would be:
- Employee Name: Obviously, who’s working!
- Date: Which day the shift is on.
- Start Time: When they clock in.
- End Time: When they clock out.
- Role: What job they’re doing (e.g., Server, Bartender, Cook).
I started by just listing out some names. I grabbed some Welsh names I liked – Rhys, Gareth, Owen, Sian, Nia, Ffion. You know, kept it thematic. Then I made up some dates and times. I wasn’t too worried about making it super realistic, just wanted to get the structure down.
Building the Roster
I thought about using a spreadsheet, because, let’s be honest, that’s probably the easiest way to do this. But I wanted to make it a little more challenging. So, I just used a simple text editor,I tried to keep things lined up, but it wasn’t perfect. I used spaces to kind of create columns, like this:
Employee Name Date Start Time End Time Role
Rhys 2024-10-26 9:00 AM 5:00 PM Server
Sian 2024-10-26 10:00 AM 6:00 PM Bartender
Gareth 2024-10-27 9:00 AM 5:00 PM Cook
I just kept adding rows for different employees, dates, and times. It started to look like a real schedule, which was pretty cool.
Making it Look…Okay
I did use the Bold tag to make the header row stand out a little bit. After that, I kinda got bored of the plain text editor, I copied the whole thing to a simple text editor, and it made it much easier to read.!
My Thoughts
This was a really basic project, but it was a fun little exercise. It showed me that you can create a simple roster without any fancy tools. Of course, for a real business, you’d want something much more robust, with features like automatic calculations of hours worked, conflict detection, and all that jazz. But for a quick and dirty schedule, this method works just fine. It gave me a starting point, and maybe someday I’ll expand on it and make it more user-friendly. But for now, it’s a decent little Wales-inspired roster!
