More Awesome Than You!

my business manager keeps assigning tasks to the employees, although they all have tasks according to their talents. the stupid manager assigns them some other tasks that they even can't do and my business owner sim always has to go after her and reassign the original tasks. aaargh.  >:(

Just have the owner or a family member tell them to "Stop Minding the Store". Then they'll just be another controllable employee without all of the assignments queueing up.

oh ok, but will they still manage it when my sim is not there?

Yes.  I ran into this too and now I never have any managers minding.  If you go to the business with another sim (a non-owner) it looks like they go back to minding, but never when you're actually running the lot.

Well, I have an anti-reassign prototype, which causes the reassignment orders issued by any non-controllable sims to be ignored. However, it has not been tested. If you would like to volunteer for this, I can place it in public test.

I would like to test this, Pescado. It drives me mad when playing other sims, seeing employees being reassigned not only by the manager, but also by the not-controllable owner. They're very busy doing this all the time so noone can finish any task.

I could test it, but since the "mind the store" task doesn't seem to have any use I can solve it by just not assigning that task. ;)

This only works when playing the owner.

You can try the "noreassign" in the ofb test, see if that helps.

I would also like to test this, that would be great!

I promoted my first manager yesterday and I noticed that she was constantly re-assigning tasks.  She'd take someone off something to operate the till when customers were waiting but not quickly enough so I had to send the owner to do it.  She also kept getting one employee to constantly make Sir-Bricks-A-Lots when there were already plenty in the owner's inventory.  Whenever I sent her to the till, the manager sent her back to the toy-crafting station.

What I find most irritating is that the managers no longer work, even though they have better badges than the rest of the staff by virtue of the fact that they were eligible to be promoted to manager in the first place!  You would think that if one staff member was selling and the other was restocking and there were customers waiting to pay, the Manager would hop on the till, not mess about taking one of the other Sims away from their duties to go operate it, thereby causing the customers to get fed-up of waiting to be cashed-up (which is why I sent the owner to do it).

That really irritates me too. I actually demoted one of my manager and replaced her with someone slightly more useless, because I did not want her badges going to waste.

Aren't managers controllable, and therefore you can tell them to do anything you want?

yes.

but it doesn't stop them deciding to do pointless tasks on their own!

The best solution I've found is to set the owner to restock - and ride the manager hard!  Even turning free will off doesn't seem to fix the managers.

Ness

Does slapping them on something like Macroprocrastinate or Power idle stop the behavior, or do they still queue garbage on their own?

hmmm...  that's one thing I haven't tried - or at least I don't recall doing so!  I gave up on the businesses for a bit and have concentrated on getting a few teens aged up and in to uni - I'll give that a go next time I have the game open.

Ness

I'm a little late with my test report, but my Windows crashed (was it the fault of your hack?-No, just joking). The "noreassign" works as it should, no reassigning anymore. Instead, the owner just walks around in his store, doing nothing useful (and even nothing for pleasure) except when there's something to restock. Now that would be the next level - making him do something useful. Another thing I watched: When the manager normally would reassign someone, he walks over to that sim, then reassigning is suppressed, and he walks back to his place.
But the main effect of this hack is highly appreciated by me and I'll leave it in my downloads. Thank you!

BTW, why did you take it out of the test section?

It's no longer in the test section because everything exploded in a big fiery ball visible from space because a certain sysadmin hamheadedly deleted everything for no apparently sane reason. It hasn't entirely been fixed yet.

A little something funny I noticed: If you have a two garbage cans on the lot and the manager decides to "tidy up" he/she will walk back and forth to the cans in an endless loop of transporting garbage back and forth. Weird.

I don't see the problem with allowing them to re-assign tasks. After all, your employees and your business need the benefits of whatever badges they earn while doing the new task. Customer loyalty is very easy to regain.

Do you just no longer have the file or is something wrong with it? Because I have the file and can send it to you or upload it if you want.

What I don't like the most is the manager telling the boss what to do. I noticed this when I had one of my sims visit another sim's business. She was assigning the bossman to do all kinds of nonsense. This is the main reason I would really like to try out "noreassign." The boss is the boss, not the manager.

Also, no one ever assigns a bartender. That kind of poses a problem for visiting owned clubs or bars, which I have quite a few of. I am hoping that this hack will fix that.

J.M.: You didn't answer about noreassign, but I'll attach it here anyway in case anyone wants to use it, unless there's some reason we shouldn't be using it. But I have been since it was posted and seems to work fine as advertised for me.

I had the same problem in that furniture store, the manager kept reassigning the cashier to tidy up. So, I hired some n00b to do the tidy up job and put her back on the register and the manager seemed to stop reassigning her.  Haven't tested this theory fully yet though, maybe it means all positions have to be filled?  Anyway, I'll try this out and see how it goes, thanks for uploading. :)

Yeah, but why would you WANT someone to "tidy up"? As far as I can tell, the managers just reassign people at random with no apparently rational logic. And noreassign causes these attempts to be ignored, and the employee will remain at their posts, if the person issuing the reassign order is not selectable, and therefore, ordered by you.

Tidying up seems to be quite important to customer happiness.  I was playing a farmers' market lot yesterday and when the lot got really messy, the customers were all complaining to my owner.  The loo had clogged and a large puddle of water had spread out and helped several patches of weeds grow.  Two lots of dead BBQ plates were also strewn around.  My sim was selling her way to rank 8 and the customers were really giving her a hard time.  Co-incidence?

I do find that broke sims hang around my businesses too much - they're actually a bloody nuisance.  You have to remember who was broke and not try to sell them anything cos you get the no-money sign.  Also when they are not shopping, they are doing social interactions or complaining about the shop.  That's a problem if you don't like what's going on!  I've seen one romance blossom and die in the furniture shop and several fights.  When I go play these sims I'll have to deal with the fallout!   I guess I could get hacks for no playable shoppers and no fighting, but what I'd really like is   "Broke sims go home"! :) 

I had all positions filled in that business, and the manager kept reassigning them so there were two to tidy up and no one to restock (although it was not particularly messy) or two restockers and no one in sales or something else just as stupid.

But the fix seems to work well so far, thanks!

Heh. Well, there's an idea, I suppose I could add a "no broke shoppers" to No Playable Shoppers, which now contains a mode in which you can enable playable visitation simply by hiding the FFS Money Order somewhere on your lot like in the days of old, which would then override all the settings so that NOBODY BROKE WOULD SHOW UP.

That would get rid of the really useless ones.  Of course some of them weren't broke before I sold them that 5,000$ statue, the wallscreen TV or the Servo. ;D  When they've done shopping, they need to go home not hang around until they are ready to collapse. 

If you're looking at Shoplifting, maybe it could connect with that?  Just ignore if that's idiotic.  I read that passers by were shoplifting because they didn't feel properly greeted and that portal was calling them too strongly for them to stop and pay - broke sims need to hear that portal calling them!

I know that a lot of my playable sims show up claiming to be broke, but they are definitely not broke. They pull the "just browsing" thing and the $ with the X through it shows up, and they pat their pockets. This means that they are lying out their ass, basically. I have had a large increase in loiterers lately, as well. This I can't figure out, so I just ban all those who consistently loiter.

by the way: Noreaasign works brilliantly. The only thing I have found is that if you have a manager, they will walk all the way across the lot to reassign and then when they get to the sim (who is typically the owner), that is when it drops out of their queue. This has resulted in many customers getting pissed off and throwing their bags down or getting otherwise annoyed because the manager is not doing their job. They are running around trying to reassign unsuccessfully the whole time. No manager - no problem. When visiting an owned lot without a manager, the employees do their assigned task (this includes employees working as DJs and bartenders), and the owner will tidy. If there is an open register, the owner will run the register. The owner never seems to make a move to reassign.

A couple of annoyances (not related, but I found faster as a result of testing this - so, thanks): An owned business that has a bar...the $16/every 30 min. that one would get paid to "be the bartender" at a community lot applies at owned businesses. The money goes into the owner's pocket as free money, even if they have an employee assigned as bartender. Also, any sims visiting an owned bar will get paid the $16/30 min. - even if they are not bartending. This is not the case with the DJ booths, fortunately.
Managers who have the "want a customer to get a star" want, do not get it fulfilled, even if a customer gets a star. Owners do not get the "want to give so-and-so a promotion" want filled, even if they promote that person.

Have you (or anyone else) experienced these things as well? I have no hacks that are bar/bartender/barrista related, espresso or juice.

I noticed yesterday that a "just browsing" response doesn't necessarily meant they won't buy anything. If you leave them alone and they're happy enough, they'll buy something anyways. So I guess they might not always mean they're really broke, just that they want you to go away and leave them alone.

I tried that, and all they do is chat, tell jokes, play, or sit...or complain about something.

Nec, I too noticed that an owner sim is never getting his 'promote so-and-so' wants filled either, and is rolling them up for sims he's already promoted as well.

and they get wants to promote home business employees :/

they get wants to promote their friends with no skills instead of competent people too!

I've noticed people visiting owned businesses will get wants to promote employees even when they themselves are not the owners of the store, and thus do not actually employee those people, and can't obviously promote anyone.

Incidentally, the salary demands of managers/nonmanagers is, in fact, bugged, which results in the occasional random employee with a fluctuatingly high wage demand and no corresponding reliable increase for managers.

Do these salary amounts bear any relation to what the employed sims get paid?  I'm wondering if an elder might earn a reasonable amount of money in one of these jobs if you let them keep it.  Do they get the raises?  Do they have a career track? I bet they don't get overtime!  I haven't thought to check whether an employed Sim actually got the money he earned while I wasn't playing him.  I bet not.

They do get the money, as to the accuracy of the amounts that I'm not sure of.  But, I've had a really poor trailer dweller who worked at a store suddenly show a substantial increase in funds from the store being open for a while.

Yes, a sim's daily listed wage when you play him is equal to his hourly wage multipled by the 8 hours the "Employee" job has him working.

Sadly, there is no apparent way to affect his shift times, so you're stuck with 0900-1700, regardless of whether that has any truth to it at all.

Money paid to employees while working at the business itself appears to actually go to your employees home lots.

Well that's still a vast improvement for an elder over many elder jobs!  The best paid elder job is 125$ per day for 3 hours.  If your elder is really broke, 8 hours at anything over 15$ an hour is an improvement.  If they start at say 34$, they are much better off and as they get some skills the hourly rate will get better too.

Of course, I bet they only get paid when you are playing them.  If you play their employer and his shop for a week and then go play your elder for one day, theyll get 1 days pay not 9.

In my game my playable employees are paid when I play the boss (I mean if I play the shop the money really goes into the employees pocket : when I go back to their lot they have more cash)

Oh wow, thats' interesting - wrong again!