More Awesome Than You!

I could very well be a complete idiot but I can't figure these two out unless there's a hack in my game preventing the two options from working properly.

1.  I can't assign a manager to my community lot based businesses.  The little instruction manual says "promote to manager" should be in the management pie menu but it isn't showing up for me.  Problem on my behalf or do sims have to have a certain badge level or something to be promoted to manager?

2.  The salon chair doesn't appear to work properly. I can assign someone to be a stylist..they however just stand there.  I'm assuming then that sims don't choose to be made over on their own.  Okay then, I figure out I have the option to offer a free makeover or ask the customers if they would like a makeover.  If they accept the free makeover my business owner will give them the free one instead of the stylist.  They have also accepted the one they are supposed to pay for, but they just nod and agree, get the customer loyalty star or whatever it is but then never go to the chair, or anything.  So to me the salon business seems to not work as I envisioned at all unless I am missing something or I have something interfering with it.

I haven't done much with the makeover chairs but in order to promote to manager, the employee needs a total of at least 5 badge points (bronze = 1, silver = 2, gold = 3).

Once you have offer a make-over to a sim he will stand next to the chair, looking at it with the green money bar on his head. When the bar fills up he will go to the chair, sit and have his make over : it works exactly like for selling objects in a shop (instead of picking up the object, the sim sits for his make over)
You can use the sell intercations on this sims to make the filling of the green bar faster.
Hopa my english makes sense.
Pioupiou

That interaction seems to be bugged and broken. So far as I can tell, it was meant to be the equivalent of 'show item to' something that gets the ball rolling and starts their little green shopping interest meter about the chair, except that it does nothing except, as you noted, have them nod and agree and get the star.

They will sometimes browse the chair on their own, but at times they'll do it and other times they never seem to so there's no way to control that apparently. I tried to run a beauty shop. The first day a few sims got interested and then I did some sales pitches on them, they were ready and I worked the chair, they paid and I gave them their makeovers.

After that for several days I could not do anything to get them interested in the damned chair. Even setting the price to the cheapest setting did not help so I gave up and switched to the flower making business.

The 'offer makeover to' interaction is definitely something that needs to be fixed in a future patch or hack.

My sister was having problem #2: her hairdresser can offer free makeovers, and they get carried out no problem, but when they're not free nothing happens even though the customer has nodded, agreed, got twinkly star above their head, whatever. Then the customer complains at her. WTF?

(as the salon was a major feature in our buying OFB in the first place, she's kind of unhappy about this.)

I had the same issue with my first business.

I couldn't for the life of me understand why, when I emloyed someone to do the makeovers, they stood behind the chair and did nothing. The fact that they don't interact with customers had me scratching my head in frustration ( I almost did an impression of the German kid and his computer LOL) and then I thought stuff it, I'm opening a flower shop!!

Geez, this is the bug of all bugs as far as I'm concerned and yeah.....I'm not surprised, but frustrated nonetheless!!  >:(

I kept giving Florence Delarose a makeover with the chair but she didn't change at all!  No funny makeup, no new hair style, definitely no CAS screen showing up.
I'm having almost the same problem with my restaurant, too.  The customers would be convinced to dine in and yet not all of them sit down and eat.  Most of them got the star and walked out!   ??? 
Are you all playing the service chair with or without hacks?

Well, I'm playing with all Pescado and TwoJeffs approved for OFB hacks if that's what you mean?  :)

Same here, I'm using using ones TJ or Pescado deemed 'clean' or updated, but AFAIK none of them mess with anything that should effect the chair.

In my other store I hired an elder vampire former lunch lady with a gold cosmotology badge (lol!) and assigned her to the chair but she just stood there getting paid all night and ran out in the morning. No one ever used the darned chair though my business owner was able to give free makeovers.

I think that darned chair is just fuct.  >:( Has anyone let Maxis know yet I wonder? They often seem out of touch about a lot of these things.

Hahaha.....

well Motoki I don't wade through the qaugmire that is the BBS, so if anyone's going to inform Maxis about the problem, please do, because it ain't gonna be me!!  :D

try lowering the price of the makeover.  I started out with it being 15 simoleans, and raised the price with every business rating point.  My customers now pay over 100 simoleans for a makeover.

I lowered it to the minimum and they still weren't biting. *shrug* Of course I did give some people some bad makeovers so maybe word of mouth spread? Anyway, that still doesn't explain the weirdness with the chair and offer makeover action.

re: reporting at the BBS

There's a form. It's actually just the standard one they've always had but some of the Maxoids are telling people to report OFB problems via it. However, I have serious doubts whether such reports will reach the right eyeballs and get heard. I'm sure they have to wade through a bunch of 'WHERZ BE11A!!!!oneoneoene' 'wHen R U geTing AnImAlZ???' and 'how do u get twinz?? hhhheeelllppppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' reports.

Turns out, my restaurant situation is caused by not having enough chairs around the table.  I had only 2 instead of 4 so sims were confused with the blank space, go figure!
I took out all my hacks to see if my Florence problem is still there.  Sure enough, she cannot get a makeover.  Oh, well.

Nice to have you back Motoki I missed your humor, I haven't had much time playing with OFB so didn't encounter any bugs yet.

I've been able to get the salon chair to work but only if it's with a playable Sim. I use the 'Offer Makeover' interaction, get the bar up, and once it's full, choose the 'Be Stylist' option. It's worked almost every time with me (for some reason, it doesn't seem to work if my Sim was about to interact with the other Sim when the bar fills up).

Then again, the salon chair might be bugged and I've just been lucky enough to get it to work. Who knows?  :-\

I suppose I could try taking all my hacks out and seeing if the damned chair works any better, but too be honest, I don't feel like it. :p I still the darned thing is bugged.  :P

Motoki I haven't played with the beauty salon chair yet.  I've loaded a big family to test out Doc Doofus' hack, so while I'm at it I'll see if I can get the chair to work.  I had a vanilla neighbourhood, but I've just loaded back in the basics.  If I have problems I'll remove the downloads folder and try the chair again.

Maybe that's what they're supposed to do. I mean, it seems like a business fundamentally aimed at mutilating sims seem to be unprofitable: Why would you want to change how a sim looks, given that you probably already had them the way you WANT them to look to begin with? So maybe this is the non-destructive way that they make money.

Well that might be all well and good if I actually were making money.  :P

Besides, OFB adds a whole new shopping district town full of uglies that need to be made over.

Figured out the manager thing after reading this, thanks :)
Although the whole manager thing doesn't quite work the way I expected to either.  After about a sim day I got a message that my store was making no money and I need to go "shake things up a bit".  Umm yeah, the reason I wanted a manager was so I wouldn't hafta go to the damned business everyday and focus on another one.

Anyways...
I've been messing with the chair.  I gave up and turned my salon/flower shop into a plain old flower shop.  I had a few sims approach the chair on their own.  A few bad makeovers took place.  The good ones  done by a non playable employee left the sim lookiing exactly the same.  It seems the only way their appearance changes is if a playable sim is giving a makeover or a bad makeover takes place which makes enough sense I suppose.

I have a feeling Maxis will say the way the chair works is "by design" but it does seem a little buggy and makes it almost impossible to run a salon type business.

And off the topic, but I'm getting sick of sims lounging around my business having pillow fights, tickling each other and play kicky sac.

Skandelousa there is a Glamour Pack due out in June.  Perhaps all will be made easier with the parting of yet more real cash.  ;D  I was running an establishment of Lizzlove's woohoo beds while testing out Doc Doofus' hack -  a household of 8 sims, (now 3 are pregnant, so I'm awaiting the births), so what an ideal place to put a salon chair.  After watching a cashier, a salesman and a stylist eat 121 simoleans an hour into the account (money borrowed of Monique's computer), I got somewhere.  A playable sim did a free makeover on a customer.  One very unhappy client.  Nevertheless, another customer hung around considering, but gave up in the end and went for a woohoo.   Many, many simoleans later, I discovered that my playable sim had earned herself a bronze badge after standing behind the chair for quite some time.  A customer queued and sat in the chair.  The mirror came up and I did the makeover - on behalf of the playable sim.  One happy customer.  But it seems it does only happen with a playable sim.  I'll try again, because the npc stylist has a silver badge in cosmotology, but she did not get a customer all day.  Maybe the salon needs an appointment system.  ::)

Apparently, the Prima guide says you have to call and "check in" on your business once a day. If it's the lowest level doing that will take 4 hours (!!) and if it's the highest, 10, it will only take 15 minutes. The rest are somewhere in between. Personally, I think the god damned things should be able to run themselves.  >:(


They always do that because they are lazy fucks and don't want to fix it, or rather they are greedy fucks and would rather allocate their time doing things that will get us to shell out more money like making 'shopping packs'  ::) rather than doing things to fix annoyances and non playstopping bugs but won't get them any money. I mean, how long have we all been bitching about the god damned phone now? But it's not some glitzy feature they can promote for their next expansion I suppose.

Oh and I seriously doubt the glamour pack will interact with the chair in any way. As far as I can tell, all these packs are just objects and that's it. I think the Christmas one was a little bit of an anomaly since it did have npcs, but I see no mention of anything but just regular old objects in the upcoming packs.

I think the problem with the salon chair is that customers lose it from their queue very easyly : for example simJane just decide that she wants the make-over (her green "carrot" bar fills up to the top) but SimJoe is telling a dirty joke to simTom just in front of the chair : simJane just drops the action, and often goes to check another chair if available, starting over the green "carro" bar filling process. You may gain some stars this way, but no money !
If there's no one in the way the chair works very well in my game. When two sims are checking the same chair, the second one to make the decision even go sit on a sofa and wait for his turn to the chair. But then again if someone or something blocks his way he drops the action immediately and goes away, finding something else to do.

Oh yes, I figured out that you're supposed to call & check in on your business..only to start wandering if that concept is a little buggy as well.  Since I have no idea how it is supposed to work it's hard to say.  I left my business alone for about 4 sim days.  Each day I had the sim call in and check on the business, 1x per day.  The first day it worked normally.  The following days I get a rather rude message from my manager stating something about blah blah things are going fine why are you calling so much or something to that extent then eventually followed by your business isn't making any money message.  Hmmm yeah okay.

Pioupiou, I agree.  I wish that so much socializing didn't go on in the shops.  It seems to take precedense(sp?) over actual shopping. 

Perhaps there is a certain amount of time required to pass before you should call again, like say 24 hours or something, so if you called at 10 one day and 9 the next it might not be enough time. Or maybe it's just buggy. :p

Bearing in mind I haven't got the game yet, but would it be feasible to incorporate, say, individual mini-room 'booths' with a chair in each?

Better yet - if you *can* do little mini-rooms, would it be feasible for someone to code a hack a bit like the Bathroom Uses You object to allow only one non-player Sim into the room at a time, so they could get to their makeover and then bugger off afterwards?  Something that'd stop them dropping the makeover thing from their queue?

Like I said, I don't have the game; if that's a completely stupid suggestion just ignore me and I'll go away.   ;D

I'm afraid more walls and doors mean more chance to have the sim's path blocked... A kind of bathroom use you for the chair would be nice but maybe not possible : the sims are slow to make their decision to use the chair, so it's good to have more than one look at the chair at the same time...
Something like macro... concentrate could help, but I'm not a modder so I don't know what's possible to do.
Pioupiou

I think I have finally figured out how to run a somewhat successful salon..at least as successful as it is going to be with the way the chair works and how fast the buy bar can drop out of que for it.

All that is really needed is one chair...two worked okay but it was much more than needed with how long it takes a sim to decide to get a makevover.   I started out with 4 but that was complete overkill.  Make sure you have absoloutly nothing else for sale at your salon, otherwise the customers are automatically drawn to that and not the chair.  I had one thing of perfume for sale (thought it would be fitting) and everyone flocked to that one tiny display & ignored the chairs altogether. Got rid of that and layed off my overkill of employees and it started working better.  One or two good sales-sims help although all customers seem to generally grouchy about the thought of having a makeover.  Some even seem to be insulted by being offered a makeover, but now I get 5-10 a day doing it this way.

I do like that it is one of the more challenging businesses to run, both with customer loyalty and making money.

Just started a salon and it is going good. It is only my sim working with one chair. In two days of working, she received the bronze sales badge and the bronze cosmetology badge and reached rank 3. She only has about 2-4 points in the assosciated skills.
She drew in ALOT of customers and all she had in there was the make over chair. I didn't give any free makeovers and the customers paid without any problem. They didn't have a problem sitting in the chair and they even would sit waiting until I was finished with another customer. Although you do have to be quick as their attention span is really short. What I did when they showed up was offer them a makeover; they then would either "consider" it (green carrot) or walk around for a while. Once they started to consider I would do a sale on them. This would make the bar go up higher and once filled they would sit on the couch that I have and wait until I click the chair to "be stylist". Once I clicked the chair, they would get up and sit in the salon chair.
With all the makeovers done, only two were messed up and that was because her needs were low.

That is what makes this really hard. I spent so much time, focusing on the customers trying to make some $$ that her needs (hunger, energy, bladder) would bottom out. So much time is spent on the business; it becomes a challenge to balance the business, the needs and the aspiration. Also, it is takes time for the business to make money. My poor sim didn't have anytime to chat up the men she was meeting to fulfill her want of 50 dates.

skandelouslala,
how did you sell perfume? was this a home business?

I risked it last night and got Dina to buy the Bluewater Salon place.  Because she can't stand for more than 10 seconds without having to "lounge", I used a PY plant to keep everyone's stats up (I've found this is the easiest way to build-up the businesses, but prefer to avoid it if poss).  Anyway, everyone who came in totally ignored the chairs and walked straight past them to get into the hot-tub - it was also the first thing Dina tried to do as soon as she arrived on the lot.  The first visitor was a playable who has 3 bolts for Dina and he accepted a free makeover, but no one else was biting.

In the end I made them selectable, instructed them to get a makeover, which caused them to leave the hot-tub and go to the chair to think about it.  Once they'd accepted them, they just stood there and after a while Dina would get an instruction to make them over.  Sometimes this didn't come quickly enough though and they would start interacting, which meant she had to offer them the makeover all over again.  She had no experience whatsoever but all the makeovers turned-out well, presumably because her stats were always high.  As I wanted to see a bad makeover I will have to stop cheating (sigh), apart from her comfort.  Even with the bar totally full she still kept trying to lounge on the sofa.

When she got home she took on a townie teen with a bronze cosmetology badge, so I'll see what happens when she starts working.  Sounds as if the makeovers in that case are all 'cosmetic', if you'll excuse the pun.  I assumed that the higher the badge, the better the makeover, but it doesn't sound that way. 

Those hot tubs are a nightmare when an employee takes a break. I had to get rid of them.

And yes, also the customers ignore the salon chairs because of them.

It's too bad that lot is set up to be nearly unplayable as a salon because it's really cute. You could of course, go the route of charging hourly admission to sit in those hot tubs, but that's not terribly interesting.

Thats pretty ridiculous. When I go to get my haircut I don't stare around the shop filling a "buy bar" (hmm, should I let them cut my hair? Who knows, they might be shady business men and shave me bald instead! The Horror!).
I go in and get my haircut (or an appointment).
I think I'll stay away from building a salon business. I'd be bored to tears if I had to "convince" every customer to get a haircut.