I have a dataset which contains names, date, amount and no of hours worked for some employees. The sample dataset looks like the one below:
| Name | Date | Amount | 10/1/2018 | 10/2/2018 | 10/3/2018 | 10/4/2018 | 10/5/2018 |
|---------|:----:|------:|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|-----------|
| Mike | | 50 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Mike | | 167 | - | - | - | - | 8.0 |
| Mike | | 560 | - | - | - | 8.0 | - |
| Kristie | | 467 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Kristie | | 900 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Kristie | | 65 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Kristie | | 90 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Kristie | | 665 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Kristie | | 864 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Joe | | 566 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Joe | | 676 | - | - | - | - | - |
| Joe | | 40 | 8.0 | - | - | - | - |
| Joe | | 45 | - | - | - | - | - |
As one can see, the values in Date column are blank and are parsed in columns. The dates range for each day from 10/1/2018 to 11/31/2019. So each date of every month is present in the columns. The values for these dates as seen in the above example is "8" at some places. This value represents the no of hours worked. When I upload this excel file in R, the dates get converted into characters, for example, "10/01/2018" would get converted to "43374" and so do other dates. How can I make sure that these dates retain their original format?