Ever hire a Maxis premade as an employee in your OFB business? Maybe Brandi Broke as a chef, Angela Pleasant as a cashier, Romeo Monty as a salesman, or Dina Caliente as a server? I'm interested to see everyone's experiences, good, bad, and ugly, with Maxis-made Sims as employees in OFB businesses.

As for me, I hired Juliette Capp in a business as a salesperson/cashier, and for some reason all of the customers really liked her, so much that in my next hood I think I'm going to hire her again and work her up to management. I also hired John Burb as stock crew person, I've no complaints with him.

I hired Brandi Broke as a chef at a Bar and Grille type place. She quit the first night, which only strengthened my view of her as a lazy moocher. Dustin Broke is a salesman at the mall in Bluewater Village. He's doing fine.

Brandi puts me in the mind of a welfare bum with her priorities all messed up.

Welfare bums are a myth, and if you haven't played her Brandi will be pregnant and shouldn't be on her feet all the time anyway.

Thanks, OP, for posting this. I would like to hear other Simmer's experiences with this.

Since the Ramirez's broke up and Lisa has 3 gold badges, I really think she would be a great employee for Malcolm Landgraab who is snowed under with his 3 businesses. I haven't arranged her hire yet, though.


However I did have Robert Kim hire Violet Jocque to run the cash register in his liquor store and she is doing great. The neatest thing was the last time I played the Jocque house the car pool came for her! I was so shocked I just stared at the monitor. Then my brain woke up and I checked her work schedule ( she should have been unemployed and a student) and lo! and behold she was an "Employee" with work hours similar to an after-school job. (I can of course work her overtime if I so choose, the game will never know)...

So it seems to be a very viable way to integrate your neighborhood without sending everyone to a rabbithole for work.

And it solves, for me, the problem of the elder Newsons who can't possibly go to Uni, but could work to put their siblings through; also the Ottomas family who strike me as destined for retail with one or two exceptions.

If anyone else has hands-on experience with the potential pitfalls of doing this, I look forward to benefitting from your wisdom. This is an exciting twist to the OFB style of play!

I always try and hire playables if I don't have enough family members to run a store, they don't have to be pre-mades.

janeknisely, that is how it has always worked. Must be your first time hiring a playable. For those of us who run integrated hoods, things like hiring playables are an integral part of it. You can also get mods to hire family members and change work schedules. The main downfall is the set Maxis time table that comes with it. The work schedule maker helps some with this. http://modthesims.info/d/381047 But even that doesn't take into account the sims who you want to give a part time job to, that maybe shifts to change their needs, such as being able to work on days their husband is home to watch the toddler and changing hours when their child starts school. If you place the work and school bus sign from simlogical that will stop the car pool showing up on the days you place it.

Oh yes it was!

I was fearful I would cause some glitch or other. I would love to integrate my neighborhood to your extent, your confidence inspires. Those links, which I bookmarked, will help when I get a little more sophisticated at this. Right now I am using the (marvelous) time warp of community lots that allows my kids to work at their jobs and still go to school.

When I begin to deal with the lifetime destiny of adults destined to minimum wage jobs and still determined to have a joyful and meaningful life, those links are going to make it more realistic.

Thanks.

Hiring playables is a game feature, so there shouldn't be any glitch. Start small, like you are doing with one family using the OFB job, then add in things one at a time to see how they work. Think about what you would like for your hood. You can always post a question directly related to the type of business you would like or feel free to pm me. I think I play most types of businesses. The one thing I am not very good at is running is a prison. I find the simlogical prison system more confusing than the school.

The simlogical school sign is here: http://www.simlogical.com/sl/Sims2P...itutionSign.htm You put it on the lot if you want to stop the school bus and/or car pool. It's a stand alone item so you don't have to be using the school system to use the sign. When the sign is on the lot it tricks the game into thinking they have gone to work or school so you can use it to give your sims a sick day or a holiday. You can turn it off and on or put it into a sims inventory. This is a simple mod to start with. Just try putting it out once and see what happens. I think it's under deco miscellaneous.

As for the issue of talent badges, Sims can work their way up the normal way, getting badges through experience, or one snag the vocational training thing from Sim Wardrobe. Nookington's has an orientation program for new employees (thank's Sim Wardrobe); everybody starts out with a bronze badge. Except I might actually make the factory workers start out gold, because they're limited in what they can craft if they have less than a gold badge.

I hired most of premade townies xD Like Benjamin Long,Kennedy Cox,Marylena Hamilton,Christy Stratton and etc :p
I also hired Mortimer Goth as a cashier,but man,i fired him.He didn't know how to 'touch' cash register. -.-
And i hired Romeo Monty and Miranda Capp.Romeo was supposed to make toy robots,and Miranda was supposed to make flower bouqets.They are the only ones who did their jobs well.
Cassandra Goth worked as a saleswoman in Brandi Broke's gift shop.

Gilbert Jacquet is the guy in my neighborhood who hires down-on-their-luck sims. Brandi works with Denise in the bakery kitchen. Gavin Newson and Lillith Pleasant are salespeople. He had Tybalt working for him once--not this time, and he's hired Dustin Broke before, and between he and Denise they are sort of those adults who the teens look back to later in life and say "Yeah, I was totally screwing up and then Gil hired me. And that changed everything." Gilbert has learning disabilities, and Denise is the parent who dealt with that before they were a thing you could get much help for, and she frequently tutors the teens who work there (and of course handles 'girl problems' that Gil won't hear about) and Gil deals with all the other sort of teen angst and general family issues.
Malcolm Landgraab doesn't have time to turn people's lives around at his business. He pays well and expects his employees to leave their personal problems at home.

The Dreamers ran a general store successfully for a while, until Dirk Dreamer died and Darren Dreamer went to college. Bella Pedersen (neé Goth) was a saleswoman in her husband Adam Pedersen's store, but she wasn't that good at it and soon got sent to prison for starting a riot. Other than that, I don't think any of my pre-mades have been employees.

Thank you. Knowing I am playing with a feature of the game gives me a greater sense of security that I can work within the game limits and get the most out of it. My smart but not traditionally educated Sims have a future after all.

I have over 40 businesses in my main (uber)hood with an average of about 5 employees per business , none of whom is a playable. Something I've been doing for years ,and have mentioned several times ( most recently here in post 5 http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=515732 ) is still something that I think few are aware of , and maybe? , no one but me ever does. You can also , with the help of mods , hire young adults that you have no intention of playing. I'd guess that of my 200+ employees about 80 are young adults and 20 are service NPC's.

I'm the opposite, I have tried to be rid of as many NPC's as possible with all jobs being given to playables. When I go to a business I want to see people who are part of the community serving, cooking etc, not an NPC. The person who comes and cleans Malcolm Landgraab's house is a playable who gets teleported in. Same for the gardener and repair man. Some people I know even use SimPE to make the NPC's that the game has to have, such as the mail person, look like a playable. So Dagmar the mail lady looks like one of their playable sims. I haven't done that because one I'm not sure how it's done, two what happens when the playable sim ages or dies? And Three I have occasionally married NPC's in, Dagmar being one of them. I feel more kindly to the mail and paper delivery NPC's than I do to the ugly bar tender the game just sporned. For some of my sims the paper boy/girl was their first friend.

Kaylynn Langerak HAS to become a playable in my game, that's just how it is. I like to make Lucy Hanby a playable as well.

Are those maids only in Plesantview? I don't play Pleasantview only my own integrated custom hood. I think the game would sporn a different maid in other hoods.

One time, I hired Ripp Grunt as a cashier in Florence Delarosa's home store. He didn't even make it to the end of the first day before he abruptly threw a tantrum and quit on the spot. I was letting him take lots of breaks and earn a fair wage, so I'm not sure what he was so angry about.

I tend to just grab whoever seems most qualified to fulfill my needs, even if the character is Townie McGeneric, so I don't usually get playables as employees.

I think I read somewhere that they spawn in custom hoods, but I dunno. It's been a long time since I tinkered with a custom hood (except my custom subhoods).

For those who're surprised why some sims are quitting with no reason: as far as understand, sims might quit when in bad mood. So if their aspiration is in red, they can quit even with seemingly no reason. That can easily happen with playables, as you might've left them with red aspiration while playing them previously.

The maids of Pleasantview will spawn in custom hoods that aren't created in an empty environment, along with the rest of the Pleasantview townies. So I have Kaylynn, Lucy, and Remington in Drama Acres; also cops; probably taxi and bus drivers, too.

And you have to watch the little ball floating over the employee's head. Playable or townie, if the needs or aspiration get too low, it'll show in that ball - you have to keep it green or better. Let them have breaks. Also make sure you pay them well enough to be worth the work you ask of them.

If you use Pescado's OFB hacks, there is some part of the controller that sends the sims 'on break' when their needs get too low if there is no way to replenish that need on the lot.

I pretend that Nookington's employees are unionized, which means I have wall hangings in the break room related to the SEIU, some employees have SEIU pins on their uniforms, and they are well paid (overpaid, as the game would say). I also try to be sure and give the employees adequate breaks.

In my megahood, Malcolm Landgraab likes hiring good-looking female playables for his businesses, so he's hired new teen Beatrice Monty as his cashier at Electronics Supercenter and her neighbour Jennifer Burb as hostess at Club Dante. Beatrice had a bad first day (I say due to being heckled by customers about her aunt being a murderer), but once Malcolm made her put on a prim-and-proper blue dress, she became very professional and has been showing a very good work ethic for such a young teenager. As for Jennifer, she likes the pay, but doesn't like having quit her job as an EMT for one that involves wearing a short dress with visible garters. And she's pregnant, so I have no idea if she'll be showing up this rotation...doesn't matter, Malcolm can run the club without her if he has to. She's not that useful, and only Tybalt Capp seemed to find her appealing.