Issues with starting a sewing business

[Lion]

I want to have a business with seamstresses making all the clothes, quilts, and curtains etc., for the whole neighborhood. One was working fine until now I need to hire a second seamstress. I had two sewing machines, two seamstresses were directed to sew on each of the two machines. One sat down to work, the other just stomped her feet behind this one, not heading towards her machine to work. I directed her again to the other machine, she kept stomping, not recognizing the other machine at all. Then after a while, that seamstress wondered around a bit and then decided to sit on the chair that's meant for the other sewing machine. I saw that and directed her again to sew, she started sewing!

Another issue is with the bathroomusesyou. The sewing employee will be called to use the bathroom, way ahead of other employees that arrive at the same time, and then wonder around, not returning back to sew.

[notovny]

Aye. Sewing by employees is rather badly broken. After failing to get the Sewing Employees at my Sewing Factory to  distribute themselves properly, I micromanaged each one to their posts, and wound up using maxmotives and motivedecay off to keep them there. They'll almost invariably attempt to go back to an occupied sewing machine and drop out of queue, no matter which sewing machine you click on.

I ultimately decided that the only things worth making were potholders and teddy bears. The annoyance of having the curtains and quilts jump to different locations upon restocking, sometimes jumping to a parallel wall elsewhere on the lot, was simply unacceptable. Sewing-machine produced Customized clothing is indistinguishable,  Sewing machine Custom clothing is generally ugly.

[Lion]

Ha, just as I was thinking it can't be more broken! Manning them to the machine is hard enough for me to have a business of any significant scale, little do I know restocking can be such a pain too.  So far, I call over the business owner, make selectable, put an outfit or other items out of the inventory down, and then send over money via money order. And since it is a home delivery, there is a 25% charge on top of the value of the goods.

By the way,  is it just me or it is really hard to sell stuff now in FT? The buy bar can be almost full after a few sales pitches, and then just go poof. But I did manage to sell three items at a shop (both big and small value items), after a whole day, with 8 customers on lot at any time, and a dedicated salesman. I also sold a few make-overs in another business. So it is not that some hacks are stopping my playables from buying (no noplayableshopper).

[Added] And one more thing to add. Is setting price for everything at the cashregister broken too? Even though it was set at 15%, the prices actually only went up a much smaller fraction of the value of the goods (more like 4%, but vary). All I had were crafts and harvests, though. Maybe they are different?

Now you reminded me, assigning job to make outfit should have a "make one" option. They now just keep making the same outfit. I had to keep an eye on the employee to "shoo" her off once one was finished and then started a new outfit. Then I got tired. So now, after "buying" an outfit, I just "force error --> delete" the outfit, and have the sim "get for free" a new outfit from Numenor's clothing hook thingy. For the customized clothing, I have been waiting patiently for somebody to figure out how to make new meshes for it. Otherwise, I'll stick with the outfit option.

 

[Zazazu]

By the way,  is it just me or it is really hard to sell stuff now in FT? The buy bar can be almost full after a few sales pitches, and then just go poof.

It depends on the customer. I only have one true retail biz...other one is a salon. The farm lot sells packed produce on harvest days to townies only. Average priced, approximately $200-$300 a crate depending on the produce, sometimes with individual fish thrown in (I don't direct my sims to fish there, but I sell what they do autonomously). Most townies take a few minutes of pondering and pick up the produce quickly. A couple are serial looky-loos. I'm about to ban them from the lot all together. I think these are the same sims who also ignore the salon chair and instead have water balloon fights in the front yard of my salon. This is with BRY and customer selector set to the relevant settings.

[Insanity Prelude]

I think SimWardrobe has a hack to make employees use unoccupied crafting stations.

[Lion]

Yeah, they have one for the pottery station, not sewing machine.

[J. M. Pescado]

I think these are the same sims who also ignore the salon chair and instead have water balloon fights in the front yard of my salon.

Try getting nopedostalkers, your solution to inappropriate socialization.

[Lion]

More borkness:

When you direct employees to sew where there is an unfinished item, they do not resume making it, unlike other crafting benches, but rather start a new one, and the srapping the old one does not refund your materials. 

So I used please yourself vase to max motives for an employee, sat her down to sew, and looked forward to a night of productive work. But no, even maxed motives do not hold her down. She stopped to cough, and then left to pee, even though bladder is all the way green. I'm pulling off my hair.