The Tinkers

Sometimes I despair over the Bluewater pre-made families. Do any of them have any business acumen at all?

Today I'm with the Tinkers. I suppose they're a typical of the Bluewater business families. They live in a big house with a big garden, most of which is lawn. At the top of the garden, as far away from the front street as you can get is a wooden hut containing a little workshop and a tiny shop. They're just finishing breakfast. Wanda has finished hers. She is now going through to the front room to watch TV on their flat screen television! And she wants to have a baby. She also wants to learn to make cereal. "Seriously woman, you pour it out of the packet into a bowl. And then you pour milk over it. I think I've known how to do that since I was about 5." They have §214 in the bank. "Wanda, your family is facing financial ruin and you're going to sit and watch TV in your undies! Don't you care? For XXXX sake, get the XXXX out and do something!" I feel bad as "an old white man" talking to a black woman like that, but seriously she doesn't seem to have any sense of priorities. Or maybe it's just that the financial situation is getting her down. She's not without talent. If they ever do succeed in digging themselves out of their current mess, it will in large part due to her skill as a toymaker. Her husband Stephen is little better. He's still eating breakfast and is sitting at the breakfast bar talking to Roger Jeffrey. Now Roger is the newest member of the family. He's the shyest boy in all Veronaville, but he's also Melody's new steady boyfriend, and, at Melody's invitation he moved in and joined the family last night.

Now quite a few teens in Bluewater and Veronaville are wondering what on earth Melody sees in Roger, who is significantly younger than she is. Now at first sight, Melody seemed to me to be a confident outgoing party-loving girl. But that's just how she presents herself. If you look at her personality,she's actually quite shy and serious -- she's not as mismatched with Roger a it may at first sight appear. What she does have, and what gives me hope, is a propensity for action, a quality which is sadly lacking in both her parents. I don't think Melody is one to sit all day watching daytime TV, while the family business goes down the tube. What she also has (like all Sims with a Virgo star-sign) is a capacity for neatness. Now Andrew (also a Virgo) has long been telling me, is that a neat mind is an organised mind. He says it's why he gets things done, and I don't! So I'm quietly hopeful that she may yet be the saving of the Tinkers' toymaking business. She can see that the immediate problem is the shortage of cash. So she is minded today to go back to Bopperz (probably taking Roger with her) and offer to work as the DJ, where she feels her creativity skill will be an asset. Maybe though, she'd be better to leave Roger at home, where he might learn how to work the cash register. On the other hand, his intense shyness may make it hard for him to face the public, so it may be better for him if he stays in the backroom, where her parents can help him learn the craft of toymaking.

No sim anywhere has a business sense until a player trains them into it. The hardest thing about the first three levels of a new business is keeping the owner from distracting a customer and taking them outside to play football.

I have never played the Bluewater Families in Bluewater proper for any significant period. In Turpitudia I added Bluewater to add the families and then moved them all to the main hood and built their businesses according to my own ideas about how to build one. I have a Bluewater attached to Desiderata Valley in my retro setup, where DV is in the '50s, so all the businesses are heavily modified. And Genderswapped Bluewater was part of my Genderswapped Uberhood Challenge. Uberhood play convinced me that the best thing to do with the Tinkers is to bulldoze their house and build them something smaller and more convenient so you can run the home business properly, or buy a small business lot outright. None of the Bluewater houses are particularly well-designed, but the Tinker house takes the cake.

Since the sims world of business works so differently from how it is in our world, I try to use their behaviour to their advantage as much as I can. If Wanda doesn't want to make stuff, maybe she could at least be talked into entertaining customers in the tv-sofa? It won't make them money directly, but it might build customer loyalty and that will work in their advantage in the long run. I love having playful sims or popularity sims in my businesses, they can build those good customer contacts by playing water balloons or just socialising and then it's a piece of cake for them to get stars and regain stars they lose. Of course, it's an advantage if *someone* on the lot has enough sense to man the till...

Suggestions:

1. Sell the house, buy the Tinkers a smaller house and a small toy shop. (Send Melody to Uni, she is a knowledge sim after all).
2. Convert one of those rooms in the Tinker house to a shop, with shelves and a cash register; use the current "toy shop" for production only. Lock the doors to rest of the house.
3. Build some fences and a gate separating the house from the shop at the back and lock the doors of the main house again.

I never had a problem with Wanda making toys?

As for good relationships with other sims - well, I personally buy at shops belonging to my friends (one has a coffee place, one is a florist) - so why don't Sims do that? Business owners should have many friends as possible

The Tinkers . . . sigh.
They clearly do not want to be shopkeepers. There is not one desire between them for that. Wanda wants to be a mom, the best mom ever, and Stephen . . . well, if you had Freetime installed, you'd see his One True Hobby is film and literature, and he's also all about being a dad.

So in my game, the Tinkers inherited the toy shop from one of their families. Probably Wanda's. It might be Melody or some other child's thing, someday. They have fertility problems, so they have started adopting and fostering children. Stephen is the Dr. Seuss of my world, writing children's stories to pay the bills, and Wanda does all the home making stuff, which takes her all day because, well, she clearly has some sort of problem related to energy and activity, poor dear. They are very much a low income low expenses household, and they make it work. (Basically, Stephen sits in a high quality chair at the computer and writes, then goes and finds Wanda to play red hands three times--old Apocalypse Challenge trick to raise fun--then goes back to write til the kids come home, then helps with homework. Wanda makes breakfast, cleans up the house a bit, takes a nap on the sofa, plays red hands with Stephen, cleans the house some more, helps with homework, and makes dinner. As long as Stephen can afford groceries and bills they're financially solvent enough.)

Melody would very, very much like a quieter, less chaotic household, and hanging out in the toy shop is a way to NOT be around all the children. Also she'd like to go to private school. She'd like to have some spending money. She'd like a lot of things. A pet would be nice. But the answer to "May I have?" is always "That's too expensive." And could the children please stop asking her to help with homework or just generally be involved with them? Geez. She needs to get straight As and a part time job so she can afford clothes that don't come from the thrift store, and if she makes enough she can afford private school. (Unlike Lilith Pleasant and Ripp Grunt, Melody Tinker's parents like her just the way she is. They don't understand her ambitions and desires but they hope she achieves them.)

I also set DJ Verse from La Fiesta Tech as Wanda's niece, using the SimBlender, and Melody's cousin, so Melody has a Cool Older Cousin to look up to in college, and DJ has some family to be friends with (she's a pop sim, if you haven't met her yet).

I haven't played the Tinkers much but I've noticed that, unlike in some of the other premade hoods, the LTWs in Bluewater always seem to be the same, at least in my game. And Stephen always wants to be in Law Enforcement. The version of the Tinkers I like is a working class, church-going family (Wanda's hat!) who want to have a big family and can't have more children. Toymaking could be a hobby for them rather than a business, but I usually sell their ridiculous house and put them in something more suitable, and they don't have a business at all. Instead, Stephen is a cop who never advances very far, and maybe they start taking in foster children. I see them as solid, salt-of-the-earth people, and maybe Wanda is a bit of a neighborhood busybody. I do like giving the toymaking bench to family Sims who mostly use it to make toys for their kids/grandkids and for giving as gifts. I did this with the Burbs once, and it seemed to fit well, so this could be an idea for the Tinkers rather than trying to make money at it.

Malcolm usually wants to be a Criminal Mastermind, which to me fits with owning businesses if his racket is organized crime and he needs some legitimate businesses for money laundering (a la Breaking Bad). Checo wants to be a Business Tycoon usually, which to me goes along with owning a business, and I think he really likes going down to the furniture store and schmoozing, but I always have to get Lisa a career in Medicine (I think) so she will feel fulfilled. Whereas Gilbert has no interest in running the bakery at all but still does whatever his mother says, which is why he decides to get married. However, when Denise goes, I think the bakery will go too, if Gilbert has not found someone to manage it for him by then.

Florence is the one I usually despair of. I like the idea of her, but it's hard for me to make her interesting in gameplay. I just do not see her as a business owner, although I could see cultivating an interest in gardening for her. Maybe she has to get a partner to take over the actual business side so she can hide in the back and take care of her interests. Or hire someone from another neighborhood--I have seen people do that in gameplay.

I can not connect with the Bluewater families at all. I don't play businesses like I use to, so that adds more to the disconnection.

Since Wanda and Stephan are family sims, I'm not sure if they are the best to run a business. They may loves making toys, but not every hobby can be turn into a profit. Melody seems like her parents saving grace. Melody is enough of a hard-worker to get a good job and support them. Unfortunately, that keeps Melody suppressing her own wants and desires just so her parents (and siblings) can eat.