I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this might be a result of having nine sims living on the same lot (thanks to BoilingOil), as there were some other oddities that I had to Blender away... all the kids were in adult "levitation" mode, and nobody was related to each other. That part was easy enough to fix, albeit a bit tedious.
Here's the situation: Lucius Vorenus, who I've given a "junior officer" rank in the military, is off at work as I enter the lot. After the sun has set and risen again, I realize he hasn't come home... easy enough to overlook with everything else I was dealing with. I look at his job tab to see when he's due home, and it says he's unemployed (even though the little "tank" icon is over his portrait. I try everything I could think of. I tried "summoning" him with the Blender, but as he was technically a member of the household, he wasn't available - only other families show up there, apparently. The Batbox seemed like the most obvious tool for this sort of thing, but I couldn't figure out what part of it to use. Later, I noticed one of the kids heading out to the street when he should've been hitting the sack (a school night). Sure enough, he was going to ask Vorenus to read him a bedtime story, as he happened to be standing out in front of the insula (his key had vanished). Now that he's home, I can fix his unemployment problem, along with straightening out some facial features that I've been meaning to get to. But I think he just happened to be passing through, and... what should I have done if he hadn't? How do you get family members to return home when they're seemingly stuck at work?

The part of the batbox you want is "Force Errors.../On Off-World". Make sure to turn off testingcheats first, or else you'll have to click "reset" a whole bunch of times as it asks you what to do with every single off-world object. Sims who live on the lot but are not present are being held "off world" and that's why they can't be summoned because they're still technically on the lot, they're just in this kinda... non-space where they don't occupy a specific tile. If an off-world sim gets reset, they appear next to the mailbox. It sounds like your sim might have also got reset for whatever reason.

I don't know if that will fix the weirdness with him showing up as unemployed. I once had a very similar thing happen to a sim after I was messing around with the in-game debug object Tom's Clothing Tester (I wanted to look at all the career outfits, but I think it did something weird and overwrote part of the sim's job data or something? She was showing up as unemployed, but the carpool would come and she'd go to work and then never return.) That one I wasn't able to fix until the family had moved out of the lot.

Since discovering the SimBlender, I don't typically play with the testing cheats enabled. I did in fact try that command from the Debugger, so I guess I probably actually made him reappear, and just didn't notice him standing out there right away. I forgot that when they get reset, Sims will tend to remain idle until you give them new instructions. Thanks!

Sorry to dig up this issue from last year, but this just happened again today. I went to the debugger and forced errors on off-world. So far, nothing's happened. I was able to correct the sim's sagging motive levels with the blender, so he must be around somewhere... I just don't see him. His avatar reports still being at work, although he's unemployed. It's been several dim hours and he's yet to reappear. What to do, what to do? Make the family move out and then back in?

EDIT: Well, I was GOING to do the move family thing, but first I wanted to plant one of those magic "stay objects" shrubs, so I wouldn't have to schlep all the family's possessions around in the inventory backpack. And then I saw the Simlogical Teleporter Shrub, which as it turns out, works on family members, even if they're stuck in the Upside Down. So crisis averted.

EDIT #2 - Nope, no good. He was teleported in, but since the game thought he was still at work, he couldn't do anything. The deletion/save method didn't help: he didn't respawn upon re-entering the lot. I suspect that moving the family out and back in would not work either, as I think you can move when a sim is at work, and they will show up at the new house after their shift; therefore they would also still be stuck at work in this scenario. That's my logic, anyhow. Any bright ideas? Am I supposed to do something further AFTER I force the error with the batbox?

EDIT #3 - something further like... just be patient, perhaps? He eventually did reappear... maybe midnight has to come around or something. He was deeply depressed after my having canceled his "at work" status, but he recovered after I gave him a new career. Now I need to repair his family tree and relationships, which are back to square one.

This is very strange. None of that should happen. Forcing an error on him should have definitely cancelled his "at work" status. I have never teleported a sim home from work using a teleporter, but I don't see why that should have changed anything.

Force Errors on off-world normally deposits the missing sim by the mailbox. Then, if they WERE at work, they get a message that they missed work and lose work performance.

If you move house, they usually move into the new house at 8am regardless of what time it was the last time the lot was played. Sims are not at work or school, even if they normally would be at work/school at 8am on a Monday. You can tell them manually to walk to work/school. The school bus and any 8am carpools will not come.

Being reset by forcing an error should not wipe family tree or relationships, either, and it should not zero out their aspiration score (I assume that's what you mean by "deeply depressed" ?)

I wonder if something is happening in your game to cause sims to lose a bunch of data such as their job, relationships and aspiration score.

Edited to add:



This also sounds very much like everyone in that family got part of their character file deleted.

This is not caused by having larger families. Plenty of people play with that mod and don't have this happen. Something else is going in in your game.

Use Fix Work State on the batbox, that will bring them home and exempt them from having to go to work for the day.

I'm not entirely sure if it'll work for chitown considering I think they're on Mac, but Charles Object Editor can selectively force an error on a specific Sim or object.

Work State... as in their job! Makes sense, duh... Thanks for that; one of these days I'll get around to reading the BatBox user manual, so I don't feel so clueless. Seriously, it never occurred to me what that meant.

That was made by someone with FreeTime, looks like, which I don't have. Might work anyway, and it looks interesting enough to possibly try it out.