My police and fire are both residential lots.

My police station has a drivable police car, my guy wear his uniform not all the time but frequently. He goes to work somedays but also runs the shop at the station. The station is zoned as a home business and when open sells toy police cars, burglar alarms and a novel written by the police chief. "Home Safty" There is also a jail cell which I sometimes teleport a criminal into.

My fire station is similar. They sell toy fire trucks, smoke alarms and also a sim written novel "Drop and Roll" and a second book for kids "Smokey the Llama"

I am always trying to think what I can add to each workplace.

You could, but I would think that it's the chief's job to get out there and meet sims, instruct them about fire safety & get sims to install an alarm. I would sell alarms at the station, or if you don't want to make the lot a business, have the fire chief go to community lots and meet & greet playables as part of his duties. I'd also get the local church or philanthropists to give away alarms to poor sims. Perhaps this too could be incorporated into the fire station duties--they hold fundraisers, like those BBQs, in which they get the town to donate (via ticket machine or performing for tips or whatever), then they use the money for good works like giving alarms to sims in poor households.

That is precious!

I do things the easy way. My doctor charges an entrance fee and has his career reward (for visitors to play with, sometimes he teaches them); some exercise equipment (fit is healthy, is it not?), a pond for visitors to fish in and a BBQ if they are hungry. He also has two chess tables and a telescope

He goes to work normally and visits his business on his days off or after working hours.

Interesting idea... but I don't necessarily want my poorer sims to have fire alarms. I usually make sure that the amount of wealth a sim has in game directly affects their ability to meet basic needs, from earning skill points, to where they live, to whether they survive a fire or not. I like the variation, and it's certainly realistic lol. I use my churches to run soup kitchens that feed poor sims for that day, and a 'daycare' where children and toddlers can be looked after while their parents enjoy the service, and they play an extensive role in benefitting the communities, but I'm not a benevolent player-god all the time lol. I want to play firefighters, so I need to create situations where I would need to use my own playables as firefighters as opposed to the nice NPCs. That's where the Fire Station really comes into its own. It's both a barracks and a training center for sims in the cc Firefighter career. They can build skillpoints there to advance through the ranks of the job, and also learn Fire Prevention to make them actually useful at extinguishing the flames - potentially. There's a chance the fire could still be too out of control and tragedy could strike.

The fire chief memory might be too much to do though. Maybe I'll just teleport in the first fire fighter sims when I have them trained and see what happens from there.

It's the same with the police station. I use uniformed police sims to actually police my neighbourhood, catching criminals in the act! I wish there was an 'arrest this sim' interaction, but since there isn't there's a bit of pretend involved. After that I teleport them to the police station and keep them in jail for however long before sentencing them to prison or letting them go free.

I dunno. I like to make things like that more playable so that there's this sense of where NPCs come from, and why they're running around doing things in the first place, even though I probably won't necessarily teleport in the police officer NPC. Are those even safe to interact with?

Is it not compulsory to have a smoke alarm where you're from?

Smoke alarms are so cheap too. It would be hard for me to justify not having them. There are other mods I can put in to make fires risky and still have the alarms.

Agreed; I have Weekly Arsonist Burglar and More Dangerous Fires, so in my game fire is the great equalizer. It's a significant risk to all homes, no matter where you're living. Also, I feel like if there was a really bad fire in the neighborhood, the community would get together and install smoke alarms. That actually happened in real life--a fire started in a house that either didn't have a smoke alarm or the alarm's batteries were dead. I can't remember which. Either way, by the time the neighbors noticed and the fire department arrived, it was too late. The entire family died, including several kids. It was really sad. The fire department was so upset about it, that they went back to the neighborhood to check that homes had alarms & they installed smoke alarms in the homes that didn't have them.

That's sorta what I was trying to get at before; I feel like real firefighters would be more concerned about safety--about spreading tips/teaching others what to do in an emergency and making sure that every place has the tools they need to be safe, like a smoke alarm. Because a big part of firefighting duties include prevention awareness, you know? As a kid I went on class trips to the fire department--I think I was in preschool at the time, actually. Then throughout my elementary and high school years, firefighters (and police officers) came to my schools to talk about safety, etc. And it's not just schools; firefighters go around and do inspections at business and offices. I worked in a clothing store for a while and experienced many surprise inspections. They do not give you a heads up and if your exits are blocked, or access to fire alarms and extinguishers are blocked, you are in trouble and could be looking at a serious fine. At my office now, retired firefighters/chiefs are the ones that come around to talk (about every 6 months or so); and they talk about not only fire safety, but what to do if there's an emergency in general. And that's in addition to the building inspections and the fire alarm testing that's required.

So there's a lot of things/duties that a player can have firefighters to do & simulate. Police officers are safe to interact with, btw, @terula8, but I know some simmers use simsurgery to make the NPC firefighters look like the playable ones, so that when sims call them, the right people look like they are showing up. And like RoxEllen1965 said, there's mods that can introduce risk, too; not only More Dangerous Fires but, in the What Are Your Game Cliches? thread, some were recommending No Instant Firefighter & Cop. Idk if those will help, but it's something to look into. Oh, and even though SimsFileShare is still down right now, Midgethetree has Cops Can Fight Burglars and Burglary Odds Tuning Mod. Idk if you saw those.