Maids doing nothing at all

[Anonym]

I found several threads where this was mentioned (but no solution was given), but when I went to reply I was advised by the system that thread necromancy is bad and I should start a new thread instead, so I'm doing just that.

For quite a while hired maids in my game have just stood outside the house and done nothing.  I've tried setting "moveobjects on" and moving them inside the house where the dirty stuff is, and they still do nothing.

I don't know how I caused it, but I had a short period of time where the problem went away and maids were being maids again; but now I'm back to having them just standing there.  It isn't the pause, where people do things after waiting too long or very slowly; it's maids doing nothing at all.

I found a somewhat-difficult workaround, but I'd have to do it every Sim-day:  Adding the maid to the household, thereby making her selectable, and giving her orders to clean house; and then when she's done removing her from the household.  I'd like a better solution very much, though.

[chaos]

Have your active sim set the front door as such. I think that all houses are supposed to have a specifically set front door, but they sometimes get unset for reasons known only to EA.

[Tangie]

In one household I was playing, the maids worked just fine - until suddenly they didn't. It got to the point where all they did was stand on the porch and not even go inside, so I finally had the sim cancel maid service. I'm pretty sure I checked the front door setting, but it's been a few weeks since I played that neighborhood/lot. I don't know what would happen if the maid service was rehired; I'll have to try that and see what happens.

I've also had the same thing occur with the babysitters. They'll work fine for awhile, then after a period of tiime they will just stand around the whole time they're at the house and do nothing. It's highly annoying, to say the least.

I don't know if this is plain old EA wonkiness or if this is partly a PC processing problem, but at least in my case I suspect it might be the latter. The reason I think this plays into the problem is because poor game performance begins affecting all the sims' autonomy, including the NPC's atonomous behavior. For example after playing an older 'hood and then starting a new one, I have been just amazed at how good the sims can be in caring for their babies/toddlers autonomously. In my older 'hoods they would rarely do autonomous child care activities and I always had to give them specific orders.

Of course this may not be the problem in your game at all, and absolutely no help to you; there seem to be a lot of variables involved in TS3 that affect gameplay. 

[PhantomNeko]

Ze maids? Zey do nuffing?

Fire/rehire and if that fails dip your PC in water.

That's what I did.

[shadow]

That's a problem I've had off and on (mostly on) since the beginning and I've never been given a reason or solution. It's not a pause because everyone else does what they are supposed to be doing, just maids and babysitters stand around doing nothing. Hiring/firing doesn't work for me. I've stopped hiring them and just make someone in the house 'neat' and have them clean the house. I also give them the 'speedy cleaner' reward. Babysitters are a different problem, I just make someone stay home all the time. 

[Steele]

I have been noticing that at the bulk of where non-active sims go to work they also get stuck at a certain part of their lots and does not go to work or school. They just stand there. After some time they'll go to the park and wander around. It also happens to certain NPCs that are supposed to be at work. I did see a mailman delivering mail at 2pm on a non-active lot.

For me this happens on an over-populated town. The game cache could not handle all the sims moving at the same time. So far with only the AM non active sims career related to your household is pushed to work as well as those households within a certain proximity are pushed. The further households are left inactive.

My guess based on my game play observations, is probably non-active households are put into more priority than the NPCs.

Does your stuck maids or nannies go home when their scheduled time is up? If they do, then probably your also experiencing the same thing I am observing. If not, there might be a certain mod, hack or setting that's interfering with their routine code.

[Anonym]

Yes, my stuck maids go home when their scheduled time is up.

[shadow]

Mine go home after saying, "I'm done here." And, they collect their $125 for doing nothing!

[DentedLemons]

My maids do this as well. I always have a front door set and it will persist even when fired / re-hired days later. It is always fine after moving to a new house, but eventually goes wonky again. Sometimes they'll follow my sim in and clean up normally if my sim is coming home from a community lot or work, but that's really hit-or-miss.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't think I've really needed much in the way of cleaning to hire a maid for. I mean, maybe every once in awhile, a countertop gets dirty. It just doesn't happen often enough to be worth bothering to hire a maid for, plus, services don't function very well when you're a neighborhood-wide house-hopper.

[RogueSkinner]

I have a twist on that issue. Not only do they do nothing, but I have one balding one that comes in, helps himself to quick meals out of my fridge and then leaves and charges me for feeding his lazy butt. >.<

[Anonym]

I have a twist on that issue. Not only do they do nothing, but I have one balding one that comes in, helps himself to quick meals out of my fridge and then leaves and charges me for feeding his lazy butt. >.<

That's an "inappropriate" maid.  There's an XML that controls the chances of an inappropriate maid (with the inappropriate trait) showing up.  Such a maid will periodically do something inappropriate.

It's interesting, though, that the inappropriate part activates in yours but, from what you say, the cleaning while not being inappropriate doesn't activate.

One thing that seems to help with the do-nothing maid problem, I found through trying it, is to make an XML mod that has maids arrive no earlier than 10 am (after the big rush to work and school is over).  It seems that regular sims are just prioritized over maids (which is reasonable) such that if the resources are being eaten up by their going to school and work the maid doesn't get properly initialized.

[embertouchtehfire]

i exprence this a few times and firering the maid and rehiring always fixes it for a while

[J. M. Pescado]

That's an "inappropriate" maid.  There's an XML that controls the chances of an inappropriate maid (with the inappropriate trait) showing up.  Such a maid will periodically do something inappropriate.

As far as I can tell, ALL maids are inappropriate, even those without the inappropriate trait, as their main loop is "Do something inappropriate", regardless of the trait.

[brownlustgirl]

I think the "trait actions loop" (my description) are killing their ability to do their jobs. Maybe my computer is too slow, but I find that the babysitters and maids have to go through many animations before entering the house. That can take several sim hours for those sims in my game, all the while the babies are starving, lonely, dirty. The house is not cared for, so a maid is useless for me.  I gathered this from my observations and learnings.

I wonder if some of those animations can be killed, maybe making the game run smoother for lower end computers?