as it says on the tin; some of my employees (namely for community lot businesses) won't stay assigned to their jobs. The problem jobs so far are DJs and masseuses. They'll work the job for a couple sims hours while I'm playing the manager at best, and then stop. If the lot is visited by a different sim/family, that employee won't even be there.

i've reassigned them so, so many times and the problem persists. i don't have any hacks that deal with businesses, so i think it's a vanilla issue, but i haven't found any solutions.

I doubt that it is a vanilla issue (having played vanilla for years). I never had to reassign employees and they only left after they quit or when the business closed.
Find out if you have any conflicting mods - just make sure. Also make sure that all the mods you do have are updated to use with AL (if needed).
Then it may be any cc that cause your game to glitch as well (I had some weird things in my game due to clothing defaults very recently, like earlier this week). I also once had serious problems with a certain kitchen counter. So a 50/50 may be needed - but if the problem is new, you can try removing the last cc you have added.