Okay, so uhhh I was playing on Apartment Life, watching my sim get along poorly with one of her NPC apartment neighbors. Well, all was well and good, until I noticed that the NPC in question wasn't taking care of himself... like, at all. To the point where I think he got low enough that he was trying to die, but couldn't because of NPC immortality, and I had to fill his needs with mods to fix it. Eventually I realized that he was, for some inexplicable reason, unable to get into his own apartment... so I tried knocking on his door, asking him to come out, and it gave me a notice that "Benjamin is currently at work." Which he, uh... he clearly isn't.

I'm not sure if one of my mods is messing with him or what, but it's really disconcerting. What's going on and is there a way to fix it?

EDIT: And it only seems to apply while playing one particular apartment; I have some playable sims in one of the other apartments on the same lot and the NPC is functioning correctly from their end.

Did you remove your CC from your Sims 2 folder and launch the game to see if the problem persists? And if it doesn't, did you use the 50/50 CC removal method to find out which mod is causing the problem?

Always the first question to be asked when experiencing these kind of bugs. Lol.

I would first back up, then move_Objects on+delete that townie, save, exit, re-enter the lot. If he's still considered as renting that apartment, it should fix him. (Edit: See below, it's not helpful, nothing is wrong with the neighbour and deleting him won't fix the apartment controller)

By the way, is it an apartment lot from the game catalogue (if yes, which one), or a custom one? Apartments are buggy by nature, pretty much, that's why I would see if deleting the sim helps, before moving on to more serious measures like Thax suggested : )

(If you're unfamiliar with the move_objects cheat code, it won't harm that neighbour or anything, just reset him.)

I've never considered pasting the downloads folder to a different place as being serious, it's always the first thing I do, because the last time I deleted a sim and re-entered the lot, the sim's aspiration was gone and... some other pretty huge things I forgot by now, and no amount of re-loading, resetting or batbox fixes could do anything about it, so I no longer consider it a fool-proof nothing-to-lose approach (like people having their appendix or wisdom teeth removed for the heck of it), that's all. I just don't feel right suggesting it casually to others anymore

It's one of the premade lots from the lot catalogue. It's called, uh... *looks it up* Main Street Mobile Homes? (The cheapest one, apparently.)

But yeah, I have several backups of my neighborhood in case all else fails, so I'll see what I can do. :'B

EDIT: Okay, so disabling custom content did nothing, aaannnddd deleting him made his door be listed as "unique separator" with no actions available. His door is still normal under the other apartment though. Uhhh, now what?

You only disabled custom content in-game, without removing the downloads folder from your Sims 2 directory? You need to cut/paste the downloads folder somewhere else and run the game without any CC, whether it's enabled or disabled in-game (and delete accessory.cache and groups.cache before restarting the game).

Ah, that is nice to know. I just was hesitant to do that because I have a looot of CC and I didn't want to have to weed through it all. XD;

Anyway, I found the problem: it looks like dear Benjamin was stuck as an off-world loiterer while simultaneously being stuck on the lot, which is why it said he was "at work" when he actually wasn't. I used the batbox to remove the off-world loiterer and moved another sim into his apartment and that seems to have fixed the problem. Yay!

Thax: I didn't mean to contradict your suggestion, just so we're clear, just stated what I would have done first because it's easier and faster and likely to help here. Again, because apartments are buggy by nature, it's the one situation where I wouldn't start by suspecting my Downloads, but there's more than one way to troubleshoot, of course.

Petfriendamy: glad it's fixed! Those mobile homes are known to easily glitch, although I had that "unique separator" weird thing in another maxis lot once, and I was really not happy about it either because the "expelled" neighbour had fallen in love with another neighbour, and they were separated by that glitch :/

Oookay, so the glitch came back, now spreading to her other neighbor, Brandi. I don't see any invisible sims on my lot to delete this time, so apparently that's not the problem after all. >_> I have doubts that my downloads are to blame, but I guess I would try weeding through them...

EDIT: Alright, I tried moving her out of and back into the apartment, and that seems to have fixed the glitch for now. Here's hoping it doesn't come back again. <_<

I went and checked that apartment where I've had the same problem, and it actually isn't solved. The funny thing is, I have two separate households living on that apartment lot, and if I load one of the families, the neighbor (the Tech La Shawn Cameron) still lives in her apartment, goes in at night and so on, and if I load the other household, La Shawn is still locked out (actually not there at all now but she was locked out initially), and the door reads "unique separator". That's the name of that door in build mode, actually.

I just found this page which gives a possible explanation: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Apartment . In the second to last sentence, it says that if a neighbour was part of an outing the playable was invited to, that neighbour can experience this issue. That might very well have happened to my La Shawn.

As for a solution, I can't find one (other than moving out like you did). I play in debug mode, so I actually have an error while the lot is loading. Cancel doesn't work, reset doesn't solve the issue and delete ruins everything (my playables cannot use stuff in their own apartment anymore).
The batbox has an option for fixing "bad apartment residencies", but it doesn't do anything either (pop up says 0 errors were fixed).
I tried deleting and replacing the door, that also made my household unable to stay in their own apartment (unusable furniture and so on).
I'm going to try and save the lot from the other apartment (the other household for which La Shawn still normally lives in her own flat), but without much hope, as my two families in that apartment lot seem to live in parallel universes...

Edit: so, after quite a bit of trying various things, nothing worked. Deleting the sim isn't helpful, as it's not the neighbour that has a problem, it's the apartment controler that is broken/corrupt/wrong, I don't know how to say.
Teleporting the neighbour back on the lot fixes the "unique separator" thing, the neighbour's door displays the correct name again, but that was never the real issue. After being teleported back, La Shawn locks herself in her correctly named flat but never comes out anymore.
I'll move the family out and back in too, it sounds like the best/easiest fix.

It might just be that particular lot. I've had a lot of glitchiness using that lot, including it not clearing out when i moved a family out of the lot. No one can rent the apartment/mobile home the Newsons were living in that particular neighborhood now. And the Picasos had a difficult time getting moved in (they tried to rent the Newson's old apartment first before settling for one of the others and there was glitchiness galore, even in the new apartment, for a while. I think I had to move everyone out of the lot before I could get them to a state where they were playable.) ~VP

Actually, you do need to be careful of just ripping out your Downloads folder. It depends what mods you have in. For example, inteen would be bad to remove if you have any pregnant teenagers, any custom item which moves like Rebecah's farm animals you can't just rip out, some global mods which give tokens such as ACR, Lot sync timer, etc. Probably some others, too.

If you have these kind of mods, it's best to make a test hood and only load that one without CC. If you can't replicate the problem, then it's probably a problem with the lot and you should first try moving all sims out and back in, if that doesn't work you'd have to bulldoze it.

Yes, I was going to post something like that. I have those sorts of mods in a folder marked 'Do Not Remove' but I also never take out my hacks folder either, even when loading and testing in hoods other than Little Carping (you need to load a hood for most mods like that to affect it).