#33
1st Feb 2023 at 2:07 AM
Last edited by AndrewGloria : 1st Feb 2023 at
2:24 AM.
The last household I was playing were the Tinkers in Bluewater. They opened a small home business by stocking the shelves in the workshop at the back of their garden, with a mixture of quality toys they'd made themselves, and inexpensive bought-in toys. Of course when they opened for business, they were a Rank Zero business, so only three customers came when the shop opened. A couple of (Playable) teenage boys actually bought toys and left, but the third customer in the shop was Fay Briggs, a stay-at-home-mother, whose husband earns enough that she doesn't have to work (rare these days), and who is currently expecting her third child, so she has a good reason for buying toys. What's more, unlike a many Veronavillians, she can easily afford to buy them -- her husband Val is Head of Planning in Monopolis. But Fay just hung around the shop all almost all afternoon, looking at lots of toys, but not buying anything. When one of the family tentatively approached her, she nearly bit their head off -- no, she didn't need anyone trying to sell her anything; she was quite capable of looking herself. Even when she started complaining about being hungry, she still kept putting off going home, while looking at one toy after another and never buying any of them. I'm afraid that Fay is really the main reason why, at the end of their first day trading, the Tinkers still had precisely zero Customer Loyalty Stars.
Then I read
UnfocusedBunny's post (above) about the Customer Limit Adjuster. . . And thought "That sounds like what the Tinkers need!" So I downloaded it. And I intend to have it installed when I next play the Tinkers. I won't go berserk: I won't set it to 50 or anything like that. I have a vision of a bewildered teen standing trying to work out how the till works while 37 impatient customers are queued up in front of them trying to pay. But if I could even set it to 5 or to 6, then one non-purchasing customer wouldn't be able to wreck the day's business quite so easily.
One thing that is beginning to catch on in my game, is asking a Sim to move in, rather than hiring them. Malcolm Landgraab started the trend with Downtownie teen Marion Hutchins, who helps out (without pay) in both his businesses. Malcolm and Marion genuinely like each other, and it's possible that their relationship might one day become romantic, but for now it's just close friendship plus business. An interesting complication is that they share a bed, because Malcolm has never given her a bed of her own, but they never do anything romantic together. Physical contact is limited to a friendly hug or a kiss on the cheek (BoilingOil mod). Last week (the most recent thing to happen in my game) Melody Tinker asked her new boyfriend Roger Jeffrey to move in. Melody and Roger really are in love with each other, and the relationship with sophisticated Melody has done wonders to bring the desperately shy Roger out of his shell. But it can't be denied that having an additional Sim available and (hopefully) willing to work without pay in the family toy business, will be a big help in getting their fledgling business off the ground. I know Florence Delarosa is thinking of doing the same thing. I'm not entirely happy with this development in my game, as it seems to verge on becoming a form of modern slavery, but given the difficulties of getting an under-capitalised business off the ground, it's an understandable way to help a small business get underway. IMHO all the Bluewater businesses, including the Landgraab businesses are undercapitalised. None of the owners has the liquid capital available to significantly expand.
Having spent much of my life as an active trade unionist, it goes against the grain to download a lower wages mod, but I too feel I'm going to I have to install
Relevant Wages. If my Sims are paying low wages it's genuinely because they can't afford to pay more. There's a bit of a problem with this mod for me, though I think (hope) I can see the solution. For my highest EP (OFB) there are two versions of it on MATY:
relevantwages-p1.zip, and
relevantwages.zip, which is the newer of the two. When I look at the rtfm file for
relevantwages-p1.zip it starts "Relevant Wages + Fix for TS2OFBp0 - TS2OFBp1". The one for
relevantwages.zip, starts "Relevant Wages + Fix for TS2OFBp2". Now I'm guessing, but I think the "p" in these abbreviations must stand for patch. So I guess there must have been two patches for OFB, presumably because the first one didn't fix everything. So my guess is that
relevantwages-p1 is for those with unpatched OFB or OFB which has only had the first patch appied. Whereas
relevantwages is for those with the newer patch. As I understand my game to be fully patched, I presume that
relevantwages.zip is the right one for me. So I'll install it and hope for the best. If it doesn't work, I can try the older version. I suppose I could go to MATY and ask Pescado, but I fear I'm not brave enough for that!!!
Another thing I intend to do shortly is give gold cash register badges to all the teen NPC cashiers in my game. If you watch them working in unowned shops, it's clear that they are consummate professionals, with a thorough understanding of the tills they operate, able to work long hours while quickly and efficiently serving dozens of customers without any fuss. If they can do this on communally owned shops, then they ought to be able to perform equally well in owned businesses. And I reckon the way to achieve this in-game is to give them gold cash register badges. The last time I played Malcolm Landgraab, I saw him talking to Veronaville NPC cashier Remington Creelman. I think he's going to offer him a job. Only drawback I can think of: these boys and girls do know what they're doing. As businesses grow busier, they will be able to keep the checkout queues moving, giving a good experience to customers, and thus contribute to the profitability of the business. Their skills definitely are relevant. As such, even with
RelevantWages they'll still be able to command relatively high wages. You just need to compare their performance in unowned shops with the antics of a rookie business owner trying to work out which button to press on his new cash register, and then getting a fright when the cash drawer hits him in the stomach!
All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
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Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.