OfB Employee payments: How broken are they, exactly?

[pbox]

This has been bugging me forever; I just tested it again and the payments do seem to be a great big mess the way Maxis have implemented the whole thing .. I'd like to know if it's perhaps just me or if it can be fixed/workarounded somehow?

Example scenario:

* Alice is unemployed, her funds are 4§ when I exit her lot;
* Bob hires Alice, paying her 100§ per hour;
* After playing Bob's business for one day (8 hours), his business expenses are -800;
* When opening Alice's home lot again, her funds are now 804§;
* Alice goes to work, returns home, popup: "Alice just came home from work, she earned 800§ today" -- her funds are now 1604§.

In other words, Alice is getting paid twice: once by Bob when playing his lot, once "from above" when playing her own lot. WTF? Where are those extra 800§ supposed to come from? Anyone else having the same issue?

I tried this with various combinations of business related hacks, including no hacks at all in an OfB-only test game .. the problem remains. The only thing I've never used is BRY. Using a "no payments" hack doesn't help, because they still get their nominal wage from nowhere upon returning home. Can this be eliminated somehow?

[J. M. Pescado]

When a sim "goes to work" from his home lot, doing "no work" effectively, the money essentially comes from the ether. Money paid during actual WORK is deducted from your owning sim and paid to the employee sim. The lack of synchronous activity makes it somewhat vague how to resolve this: If the money paid for this "invisible" work comes directly out of the owning sim's pocket, he will be losing money while no profit is made because the employee does no actual work. Plus, what would happen when the owning sim runs out of money as a result of this, while absolutely no actual work has been performed? It's quite a quandary. Furthermore, hours worked at the actual business tend to have zero correlation to hours the ownable employee actually works. It's just a huge mess.

Proposals of what can be done are open to consideration, but I can't really think of a better, less messy way that doesn't just substitute one problem for another.

[pbox]

Glad to hear it's not just me -- and I'm not seeing things

Furthermore, hours worked at the actual business tend to have zero correlation to hours the ownable employee actually works. It's just a huge mess.

Yes but that's a whole *other* mess isn't it? -- separate from the payments one .. this one I can at least understand, because the way Maxis screwed this up from the beginning, the game simply doesn't keep track of time spent on comm lots and what day it is where (that said, maybe this could be fixed along the lines of the Community Time Project and the Sync Timer somehow rolled into one? My current workaround is that I play all businesses Mon-Fri roughly 09:00-17:00, so that the employees' actual working hours are at least roughly equivalent to the time they spend offworld .. but of course it would be much less tedious if they'd leave and return automatically at the proper times on the proper day. If the employee lot is ahead of time of the business lot, the work hours would have to revert to the default 09:00-17:00 .. or maybe it would even be possible to set a default per business? Like for nightclubs and such? But, anyway, that's a different can of worms -- just thinking aloud).

Or do you mean with "hours at the business" vs. "actually working" that the employees get paid even if they hang around doing nothing useful? That's not too unrealistic from my experience .. 

Anyhow, about the double payments: wouldn't it be possible to just nuke those "from the ether" payments for all business employees completely? Of course, then Alice would earn nothing as long as I don't play Bob's business, but seeing as my hoods are time-synced anyway, that would be exactly what I want. Bob would be in no danger to go broke -- he's only paying actively, not passively; if he runs out of money, he simply closes down shop and goes home. Or sends his employees home. Or lives with the fact that his familyfunds is now below zero. In any case, Alice wouldn't be earning money that doesn't exist ..

[Khan of Wyrms]

Well, this issue does not really bother me at all.  It makes at least as much sense as the business owner being able to spend a whole day at work and then go home so that they can go to a career job all day.  What irritates me about the way the ownable business works is that the employees always have the '9 to 5, M to F' schedule.  MEAxis should have make the business owner capable of setting a 'schedule' for the business, with specific work hours for each employee and days off.  If a business owner hires a teenager to work the cash register, for instance, they should be able to set the work schedule for the employee to show up at 2, so that they can stay in school, especially since they gave no option for teenagers to 'drop out' of school.  I am sick of having to make my playable teen employees quit their jobs so they can go to school, since eventually they must go to school, due to they way the game is handled.

So, in my opinion, the most awesome adjustment that could be made to businesses would be the ability to set work schedules for each employee individually, and also set business hours for the commercial lot.  After all, there are not many real businesses that do not have either schedules for their employees or standard hours of operation.  I do not understand why they did not include this in the game.

As for the 'double-dipping', do the employees also get paid when visiting the lot with a third party, so that they are actually 'triple-dipping' or even more, depending upon how many times the business is visited by playable customers?  I never really bothered to check this out.

[pbox]

It makes at least as much sense as the business owner being able to spend a whole day at work and then go home so that they can go to a career job all day.

Oh but that you can fix with the Community Time hack .. have you ever tried it? Most awesome.

If a business owner hires a teenager to work the cash register, for instance, they should be able to set the work schedule for the employee to show up at 2, so that they can stay in school

There is a fix for that too, not sure what it's called but I think it's a MATY hack. Not exactly what you want (totally customisable work hours) but at least it moves the teen work schedule to something school-compatible, 15:00-20:00 or somesuch .. but I agree with you, custom schedules would be the better solution =)


ETA:

do the employees also get paid when visiting the lot with a third party, so that they are actually 'triple-dipping' or even more, depending upon how many times the business is visited by playable customers?

Ugh, now that you say it .. I think this is so. I know for sure that it works that way for business owners -- say they have 500§ in cash upon last lot exit, you visit their business a couple of times, enter the owner's home lot again and their budget will be 800§ or whatever. Logically I think this would have to be the same for the employees. But this is at least money that exists within the game (in that it has a source and a target), and it totally makes sense for when your visiting sims themselves buy something or give the waiter a tip. Any additional owner->employee payments can always be explained away somehow (bonus payment for good performance or somesuch), only the payments from nowhere cannot.

[pioupiou]

If a business owner hires a teenager to work the cash register, for instance, they should be able to set the work schedule for the employee to show up at 2, so that they can stay in school

There is a fix for that too, not sure what it's called but I think it's a MATY hack. Not exactly what you want (totally customisable work hours) but at least it moves the teen work schedule to something school-compatible, 15:00-20:00 or somesuch .. but I agree with you, custom schedules would be the better solution =)

I may be wrong, but I think it is a MAXIS thing, that was corrected in the OFB Patch : teenagers had the same hours as adults pre-patch (9-17), and the patch changed it so that teenagers work 15-20.
The lot debugger or maybe the BRY has the option to choose between 9-17 and15-20.

[J. M. Pescado]

You'll also need the job fixes for that, or the wages get calculated wrong, though.

[pixiejuice]

As for the 'double-dipping', do the employees also get paid when visiting the lot with a third party, so that they are actually 'triple-dipping' or even more, depending upon how many times the business is visited by playable customers?  I never really bothered to check this out.

This is the thing that bothers me most.  I don't care about the double-dipping so much, since most of the employees (cashiers and stock boys) make squat anyway, and it doesn't hurt the business owner's pocket, but the "triple-dipping", third-party visits, DO bother me a lot.  Especially since when you show up, all the employees are working, including the insanely wage-greedy managers (who I try to use sparingly when playing the owner's lot).  This does actually subtract money from the business owner, and since you're not in charge of running the business, it works inefficiently, and if you stay too long the business owner will go broke.

I very much like that my business owners can make money off visits from other Sims in the neighborhood, but the way this is set up, they almost never make a profit.

On a related note, does anyone else think that managers are disgustingly overpaid?  I almost never call them in because they're so expensive, but you have to have one to make money at home (right?).  I am already using relevantwages.  This is especially annoying when somebody owns a little kiosk or something.  Like your kiosk manager is really going to make $70 an hour!!!  Anyone know of any good fixes for that?

I may be wrong, but I think it is a MAXIS thing, that was corrected in the OFB Patch : teenagers had the same hours as adults pre-patch (9-17), and the patch changed it so that teenagers work 15-20.

This is true.  It was patched.

[jsalemi]

On a related note, does anyone else think that managers are disgustingly overpaid?  I almost never call them in because they're so expensive, but you have to have one to make money at home (right?).  I am already using relevantwages.  This is especially annoying when somebody owns a little kiosk or something.  Like your kiosk manager is really going to make $70 an hour!!!  Anyone know of any good fixes for that?

I think that IS with the relevantwages fixes -- without them, manager's pay is even more ridiculous.

[pbox]

Like your kiosk manager is really going to make $70 an hour!!!  Anyone know of any good fixes for that?

Squinge has an "employee no quit" hack: with that, you can pay them whatever you think they deserve. I use it for my regular employees -- I haven't had any managers yet, but I guess they work the same in that respect? (Unfortunately I have no idea where his hacks are currently available .. Google doesn't seem to know either, but they  surely must be *some*where?)

I also find the ineffective-while-visiting businesses annoying, but I can usually fix things by making the owner selectable and having him kick his employee's asses .. unfortunately that only works when the visiting party lives in a different household from the owner. Ar least with the making-selectable thingy I'm using (Control-This-Sim, Dolphin26 @ mts2). Maybe there's other methods, or maybe BRY would take care of that?

[pixiejuice]

I can usually fix things by making the owner selectable and having him kick his employee's asses

I do this too   I use the mind-control mirror.  I also use no reassign so the managers don't go around auto assigning all the cashiers to clean the toilets    I'm actually pretty happy with that setup, except for just that one problem of the employees getting paid (for a third time!) while I'm visiting.

I might have a look for that no quit hack.  I think somebody linked to a collection of Squinge stuff somewhere around here...

[J. M. Pescado]

I also find the ineffective-while-visiting businesses annoying, but I can usually fix things by making the owner selectable and having him kick his employee's asses .. unfortunately that only works when the visiting party lives in a different household from the owner. Ar least with the making-selectable thingy I'm using (Control-This-Sim, Dolphin26 @ mts2). Maybe there's other methods, or maybe BRY would take care of that?

BRY specifically addresses the fact that businesses completely collapse without constant manual micromanagement, yes.

[syberspunk]

Proposals of what can be done are open to consideration, but I can't really think of a better, less messy way that doesn't just substitute one problem for another.

Hrm... that is kinda sucky.  In this case, double dipping sucks.   I would suggest going the harsh route, and making so that, employers lose money while you are playing them at the business i.e. whatever their daily expenses are in salaries should remain as such.  That part makes sense at least.  However... if the employee sim is a playable sim, instead of making the money go anywhere, make it evaporate into the ether. 

In this way... when you actually go to play that playable sim's household, they will 'recuperate' that money back from the ether.  Think of it as having to play both sides of the 'timeline' as it were.  This would at least solve this particular case of double dipping.   Townies, however, could actually get to really earn their money, since you can't go and play them from 'the other side' or what not.


I'm not sure I get the thing about employees triple dipping.  Are you saying that, if a sim is an employee of business lot... and they show up on that business lot as a visitor (either in the form of some group outing, date, or walkby) the mere fact that they are present, even if they aren't there to work because you didn't call them to work, they get paid for just being there? 

Do they actually act as employees? i.e. as soon as they show up, regardless of how (in a group outing, date, or as a walkby) just their presence alone causes them to earn their wages?  Do they actually perform typical emloyee duties while in this state of visiting?  Or do they act like regular visitors who could be potential customers, and thus, they end up triple dipping by getting yet even more money from the ether? I are confused! 


Ste

[pbox]

I'm not sure I get the thing about employees triple dipping.  Are you saying that, if a sim is an employee of business lot... and they show up on that business lot as a visitor (either in the form of some group outing, date, or walkby) the mere fact that they are present, even if they aren't there to work because you didn't call them to work, they get paid for just being there? 

I've never seen that happen -- actually I've no idea what the game does if an employee visits his own workplace .. is that even possible?

What they mean is, as I understand it (and as it happens in my own game I believe):

* Bob owns a business, his current familyfunds are 500§
* Alice works at Bob's business, her current funds are 300§
* Now Celia goes to visit the business and stays there for a couple of hours -- during which time, Bob pays Alice 100§ in salary and earns 250§ from sales or whatever
* Next time you enter Bob's home lot, no time has passed for him *but* his funds are now 650§
* Same with Alice: next time you enter her home, she's 100§ richer

In my eyes, this actually makes total sense -- if Celia spends money at Bob's business, that money should better end up somewhere. Also: everything else that happens to Alice and Bob during Celia's visit (say Alice meets Joe and Bob pees himself) will leave memories and affect relationships etc, it's clearly part of their lives, so why not the financial side of it?


I like your idea of employee wages going to the ether when playing a business, and coming back from the ether when playing an employee's home lot (that's what you mean, right? I'm a bit unsure since you say "employees lose money while you are playing them at the business" .. do you mean business owners lose money?). How would it tie in with the abovementioned "triple dipping" though? It would only work if the game keeps track of how much Alice should have been earning during Celia's 25 visits since we last played Alice's home lot, and adjusts her paycheck accordingly next time she comes home from work.

Ah, but the game already does that .. which was what I was originally complaining about, I think? Now I'm confused too!    I guess your suggestion is actually the same as mine then, only with different payout times (upon lot load vs. upon return from work). Or at least the effects would be the same -- obviously I've no idea what the game looks like under the hood ..

[syberspunk]

What they mean is, as I understand it (and as it happens in my own game I believe):

* Bob owns a business, his current familyfunds are 500§
* Alice works at Bob's business, her current funds are 300§
* Now Celia goes to visit the business and stays there for a couple of hours -- during which time, Bob pays Alice 100§ in salary and earns 250§ from sales or whatever
* Next time you enter Bob's home lot, no time has passed for him *but* his funds are now 650§
* Same with Alice: next time you enter her home, she's 100§ richer

In my eyes, this actually makes total sense -- if Celia spends money at Bob's business, that money should better end up somewhere. Also: everything else that happens to Alice and Bob during Celia's visit (say Alice meets Joe and Bob pees himself) will leave memories and affect relationships etc, it's clearly part of their lives, so why not the financial side of it?

Ahh!  Now I get it!  Yes, this makes total sense, and I agree.  I think, in this scenario, if you are visiting a business that is owned by another playable and has playable employees, then the transaction of funds should remain as such.  In this case, there is no need for an intermediate ether, as it were.

I like your idea of employee wages going to the ether when playing a business, and coming back from the ether when playing an employee's home lot (that's what you mean, right? I'm a bit unsure since you say "employees lose money while you are playing them at the business" .. do you mean business owners lose money?).

Dangit!  I wish I had the modly powers to edit my mistakes quoted in other people's posts. lol.   What I meant to say was, that employers should lose money, when you are playing their household, and visiting their owned business.  That money should go to the 'ether' and not immediately to the employee.  Instead, the employee will 'earn' their money when you play their household.  That way, there is no 'double dipping' so to speak.  In a way you can look at as having to play the business from both sides.  When you're playing as the owner/employer, you are just seeing your own personal net gains/losses.  Then, you can think of it as having to play the other side when you are playing the employee's household.  Sure... it won't be as realistic... and it won't be exact either, since... I assume you can call in workers and have them work as long or as short as you want, rather than a regular 8 hours (or whatever) shift that the employee does when you play their household.  But, I think that is still better than the magical double dipping that occurs otherwise.

How would it tie in with the abovementioned "triple dipping" though? It would only work if the game keeps track of how much Alice should have been earning during Celia's 25 visits since we last played Alice's home lot, and adjusts her paycheck accordingly next time she comes home from work.

Ah, but the game already does that .. which was what I was originally complaining about, I think? Now I'm confused too!    I guess your suggestion is actually the same as mine then, only with different payout times (upon lot load vs. upon return from work). Or at least the effects would be the same -- obviously I've no idea what the game looks like under the hood ..

Hrm... yeah, definitely seems confusing. lol.   I think, in the case of the playing as a visitor of the lot... the money earned by the employee and 'lost' or paid out by the employer is fine actually.  In that case, it is like the employee actually earned what they worked for.  I think the problem is just that, when you play the employees household, they end up double dipping from some magical ether, as you put it.  So... to balance that out, that's why I suggest, when playing the employer at their business, salaries get paid out to the ether, from which it would be 'earned back' when you play the employee's household.

Yeah, it's not exactly the most consistent idea, and it has some minor issues, but this seems like the best, least messy, solution.  You would only have to check, if you're playing as the owner/employer of the business, and do not adjust the household funds of any playable employee, since they will always earn money when they go to work while playing their household.


Ste

[pbox]

Ste,

to me it seems like you want exactly what I want, but you might be making it too complicated:

In my unawesome mind (and this may or may not have anything to do with reality, because, like I said, I've no idea how the game actually handles things .. this is just guesswork from what I've seen in-game), there are two stacks of money involved:

Stack 1 is the amount that is actually paid to the employee by the owner or third-party sims (in tips, for example), either when you play the business directly or when you visit it with a third party. It goes directly to the employee's familyfunds and is available immediately when you play their lot next time. This is a realistic, *correct* figure: play Bob's business for 15 hours (either directly or by visiting it), then open Alice's home lot: she has earned 15 x her hourly wage, plus say 214§ in tips from other sims. If I'm not mistaken, the game already handles this automatically and correctly.

Stack 2 is the nominal fee that the employee would get if they would work for 8 hours -- a complete bullshit figure, in other words. This is what it says in the employee's job description; they receive it every Monday through Friday on their home lot when they return from work. This is money that the game pulls out of its ass (aka: the ether); it has no equivalent in-game. In other words, this does nothing but fuck up the so-far-so-good transaction that happened via Stack 1.


What you want to do now, I think, is somehow fumble Stack 1 into Stack 2, right? So that instead of Stack 1 going to the employee's familyfunds directly, it is stored somewhere in the ether and then gets paid out via Stack 2 (little by little, when they come home from work) .. right? With the exception of money that's earned during thirdparty visits because that sum you do want to put on Stack 1 and keep track of separately.

I think this would be very complicated all in all: say you have played Bob's business for two weeks and Bob has paid Alice 2.500§ in wages .. what should the game do if you open her lot, she goes to work, comes back and then .. what? Should she bring the entire 2.500§ on the first day? A percentage of it? What percentage? And then you would also have to keep track of who paid her what under which circumstances (playing the business vs. visiting the business), which to my unawesome mind sounds like a programming nightmare, the way I envision Maxian code 


If my assumptions are correct, I think it would be easier to just nuke Stack 2 entirely: play Bob's for a week (directly or indirectly), he pays Alice a grand total of 1.250§, open Alice's home lot and she's 1.250§ richer. And that's it. She can "go to work" (i.e. offworld, from her home lot) as much as she wants to -- as long as we don't play or visit her workplace (i.e. as long as she doesn't actually *do* some work and gets paid by someone), there won't be any additional money falling from the sky. We'd still have to "play the business from both sides" this way, as you put it, only that Alice would have the entire sum available on day 1 and however long we play her it will not increase.

(For time-synced hoods, I agree it would be extra neat if the game would do a calculation such as: 2.500§ have accumulated on Alice's "account" (i.e. stack in the ether) while the user played Bob's business for 67 hours (directly or indirectly), so for now we're gonna pay her (2.500 / 67 = 37,313432835821) x 8 = 298,50746268657 every day (and adjust this figure whenever the user play Bob's business again (and if we run out of money she'll earn zero for the rest of the time)) .. but that would only work for people who keep their hoods in sync, and also there would be no way for the user to know how much there currently is in Alice's "account" -- how much she's earned so far --, which is not unimportant in order to decide whether she should buy that new car or not, etc .. and, like said, it sounds a bit complicated to me all in all, on the other hand maybe my view is too simplistic)


So, yeah. I'm really curious whether I'm interpreting this whole thing somewhat correctly, and what people who actually *could* implement a fix are thinking of it ..


*pokes the awesomefolk*

[pixiejuice]

In my eyes, this actually makes total sense -- if Celia spends money at Bob's business, that money should better end up somewhere. Also: everything else that happens to Alice and Bob during Celia's visit (say Alice meets Joe and Bob pees himself) will leave memories and affect relationships etc, it's clearly part of their lives, so why not the financial side of it?

It [triple-dipping] does make sense, in theory.  But here is my problem with it, an example from my game:

David owns a level 10 banquet hall, and charges customers $50 an hour.  He has two employees, Andrea (DJ) and Mallory (manager).  David has to have a manager if he wants to make money at home, and Mallory demands that she be paid $110 an hour!!!  Whatever, so David just doesn't ask her to come to work when he is there.  Andrea is cheap and only wants $25 an hour, so David sells at the door himself, and Andrea DJ's, and David makes lots of money.  And David still gets to make money at home because he has a manager, even if he never uses her. 

BUT, lets say Toby is a visiting sim at David's banquet hall, and he spends a long time there.  (This is where the triple-dipping takes place)  Both Andrea and Mallory show up to work and David's profits are sucked dry!  He makes no net profit while Toby is visiting, even though Toby has paid him $50 x however many hours he stayed. 

So that is my gripe with it.  Even though in theory it makes sense. 

But *light turns on above my head* I could probably just mind-control David and have him send Mallory home.  And if I played David and had him manage his business while Toby is visiting, he could maximize his profits and make the visit worthwhile.  Off to try it...

[pbox]

BUT, lets say Toby is a visiting sim at David's banquet hall, and he spends a long time there.  (This is where the triple-dipping takes place)  Both Andrea and Mallory show up to work and David's profits are sucked dry!  He makes no net profit while Toby is visiting, even though Toby has paid him $50 x however many hours he stayed. 

So that is my gripe with it.  Even though in theory it makes sense. 

But *light turns on above my head* I could probably just mind-control David and have him send Mallory home.  (..)

Or you could try to get hold of that noquit hack (the Squinge one) and set Mallory's wage to something that makes sense for this business? Like said, I've no actual experience with managers, but to me that would seem like the easier solution.

[Singularity]

I spent some time digging through the code for hiring employees.  I'm rather unaccustomed to SimPE, and therefore not very awesome, but I did manage to hack together something preliminary.  The stock "Employee" career is stored just like any other.  The best I could do with the meager skills I have is set the career for both teen and adult/elder so that you work 0 days of the week. That eliminates double-dipping, but unfortunately doesn't let your sim get a second job.  I don't know how I'd go about doing that.  The game relies on that career being there to properly transfer employees from one business to another, among other things, and having one sim employed to several businesses sounds like a VBT.

[Soylent Sim]

I actually got the idea that what Ste wanted was much simpler.  When the employee is working on someone else's lot, the owner loses money but the employee gains none.  The employer pays for work done, but the employee isn't doing any "real" work (from the perspective of their lot and the motives/lifespan they're losing) so doesn't get money from it.  When the employee goes off to work from their own lot, they're paid from the aether; nothing of value is happening at the employer's business, and all "costs" are to the employee's lifespan and motives, so that's where the money goes.  It should all work out to something roughly even if you play roughly time-synched throughout the 'hood.  Visiting as a third-party sim would probably work best if neither employer, employee, nor the business ranking had any adjustment; not only do neither do any real work or suffer any real losses, but lack of payment and business adjustment would prevent maxian stupidity from ruining a business' rank or the owner's bottom line, while the actual shoppers got their standard goods-for-cash swap.

[Singularity]

Well, yes, I do like Ste's idea, and obviously it'd be preferred.  The problem is that I know that'd involve tokens of some sort, and I'm just not awesome enough to hack together something like that.  My homemade solution works fine for me right now, as I try to keep my lots somewhat in sync and I don't have many businesses to begin with.

[notveryawesome]

Couldn't some awesome person just hack the Employee career track to pay §0, regardless of level?

[pbox]

nva, I think you just managed to sum up this entire thread in one sentence 

hey, and if the pay is just handled via a regular carreer, that could mean the working hours are too? So we could be totally greedy and request hope for different carreers with different work hours and all that? I mean, just in theory?

Jordan, thanks for your mod -- I haven't yet had an opportunity to test it, but I guess 0 days means they never go to work from their home lot? Not going to use it as a longterm solution for this problem in that case (because I'm stubborn and dogmatic like that -- I don't want them to sit around at home when they ought to be working), but I do remember wanting a zero-days carreer before, although I can't recall what for .. I'll keep it around in any case, it's probably going to be useful in some other context. Thanks!

[J. M. Pescado]

This is the thing that bothers me most.  I don't care about the double-dipping so much, since most of the employees (cashiers and stock boys) make squat anyway, and it doesn't hurt the business owner's pocket, but the "triple-dipping", third-party visits, DO bother me a lot.  Especially since when you show up, all the employees are working, including the insanely wage-greedy managers (who I try to use sparingly when playing the owner's lot).  This does actually subtract money from the business owner, and since you're not in charge of running the business, it works inefficiently, and if you stay too long the business owner will go broke.

Actually, if you're using Business Runs You, the business *DOES* run efficiently, like the well-oiled machine it would be running like if you were actively playing it. I've done businesses that run from level 1 to level 10 completely hands-off with BRY.

[cwykes]

I'm just surprised your employees all get paid.  I sometimes find my playable employed sims go to work and don't get paid at all!  Last one I noticed that happening too was a manager.  Another bizarre cwykes type problem I guess.