This doesn't happen often, but when it does it really wastes time, so I thought you might have any suggestions.

Basically, my Private Investigator Sim often takes cases on that at some point involve a stakeout, and normally this goes fine, and I can go on to the next step.

However, on two (so far) occasions, the "Stakeout" phase of the investigation went on for faaar to long. Seriously, it takes roughly fifteen failed stakeouts before I finally get to the next step, essentially through dumb luck.

Most annoyingly, the actual animations between the two suspect sims does still go on, yet I still receive the "I didn't see anything..." message, even though the Sim must have seen something, unless he/she was blind and deaf.

Strangely enough, I've never seen this during a completely random stakeout, not linked in with any case. Is there anything I can do to remedy this?

Generally, I can tell a client a renovation is complete normally quite well, when the client is at home. Of course, my designer's work hours coincide often with other people's busy work schedule, so naturally they won't necessarily be in. So I go and do the renovation, but when I call on the Cell Phone that the renovation is complete, about a good half of the time, they never arrive back home, and if I left it, my House Designer Sim is left there to stand for hours, eating up into my work time left to do any other renovations...

So my question is, can I do anything to stop my Sim standing there for person who never comes?

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Ambitions' Professions on higher levels have always been buggy. Mods like Awesomemod have fixes of things not firing or misfiring. I think Twallan also has a mod that addresses this, but I can't recall which off the top of my head.

If you don't play with mods, it is time to get some.
If you do play with mods and CC, it is best to test if the issues recur in a vanilla game, just to rule out CC conflicts first. Do the Game Problem FAQ.

As this is more of a gameplay question, you may also want to check the Ambitions Subforum and search for these professions, if our members have some tips and trick to workaround them.
If not, you can ask in the WCIF forum if anyone knows of which mods specifically corrects the issue, if they exist.