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What is a rota?
A rota is the British and Irish word for a roster: the published schedule saying who works which shifts and when. It is the same thing an American agency calls a roster, a schedule, or simply the line-up for the watch.
Why the word turns up on your phone
Two of the biggest shift calendar apps on the store were written in Britain, and they use the vocabulary they were written in. If you have ever set one up and wondered what a rota is, or why it wants your annual leave allowance, that is the reason.
The words, side by side
Rota is a roster. Annual leave is vacation, and it is counted in hours here rather than in days. Time off in lieu, usually shortened to TOIL, is comp time. Bank holiday is a public holiday. Overtime is the one word that means the same thing everywhere.
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The words that have no British equivalent at all
Some of the roster runs on ideas a general shift app has never had a field for. A shift bid assigns the whole year by seniority. A Kelly day is a scheduled day off written into the cycle to bring the average week down. A platoon or squad is who you work with, not just when. A detail is a second job in uniform, paid by somebody who is not your department. Court is a day off that you are ordered to spend in a courthouse.
Does it matter?
Only in that it tells you who an app was built for. A rota app will draw your rotation perfectly well. It will not have a category for court, a place for the detail you worked on Saturday, or any idea what a shift bid is — because nobody who works to a rota has ever needed those.
Where it turns up
Why general shift apps break on a police roster · What is a shift bid? · Every rotation, drawn day by day
Put your own rotation on the calendar
Save the pattern your agency runs once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want to look, and back over the months you have already worked.
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