Outtakes - Industrial Action

So much for updating between studying!





The good news is, my r/l uni semester is over now (except for the final results - unlike sims who come home from the exam with their grades, I have to wait six weeks!), and I'm getting back into simming.  I'm stuck on my next update, though.  I've got an ending, and I really like it... but the beginning and middle are not so good.  So, still working on it, hope to have it here in the next day or two, then I'm aiming for a regular schedule of two updates a week after that.

In the mean time, I did play a little while studying.  I played Kyle's house for the update, and got that message about the shop not making much money, so I sent him in to play it for a day.  But instead of just a normal day at work, we ended up dealing with industrial action! :)

It was pretty easy to work out what had happened... In the new hood, I played the shop before I played either Cory or Samantha's households.  So from the point of view of the game, they were hired straight out of CAS... I then used mods to give them back the badges and skills they had in the old hood, and made Cory manager again, and also used Insim to boost customer satisfaction, so that the shop quickly got back to level 9.  Then we went on to play as normal.

But I forgot to put up their pay to reflect their improved status!  They were still being paid what the game had deemed fair, as 'unskilled' straight-from-CAS workers.

There's something particularly funny/ironic about this from a story point of view, given the history of Kyle, Cory and the shop.  However as far as the story is concerned, like anything else directly resulting from the switch to the new hood, this never happened.  From a gameplay point of view, though, I had a problem.  I could only put their pay up when they were on the lot, but they wouldn't come.  I tried teleporting them in, but they only came as customers, not employees.  In the end, the only option was to play it out.

You have a lot of customers at level 9.  At a minimum, we need one person on sales, one on cash register, and a third switching between sales, restocking, and opening a second cash register, depending on demand.  Ideally, we have four staff (the fourth is part-time/teen after school - Autumn's job, although we haven't replaced her yet).  This ensures everyone gets adequate breaks. Poor Kyle ran himself ragged trying to manage the place alone, and we still dropped to level 7 by the end of the day!  I left it there until the staff came back, because it was easier for one person with less customers.

Every couple of hours, we'd try to call in the striking staff, but they wouldn't come.  Finally, about an hour before closing, Cory came back.  I found it interesting that the 'ridiculously underpaid' Cory came back before the 'underpaid' Samantha... maybe because he now has a better relationship with Kyle than she does? Anyway, he immediately got a generous pay rise, which improved their relationship further.

I sent them home, and Kyle came in again the next morning.  Again, Samantha wouldn't come to work!  Around this time, Kyle started rolling 'Fire Samantha" wants again... lol... sorry, there are laws protecting striking workers... although I have to admit, I was starting to think along the same lines...  She eventually came back, not that day, but the next morning!!  I even tried getting Cory to phone her instead of Kyle, that would probably work in my story but it made no difference in the game :)

One other funny thing happened, on the day Cory and Kyle were there without Samantha.  The reporter/critic came in.  He's generated randomly and different in every hood, and I had no idea what he or she would look like in this hood.  So we treated him like any other customer... and this is what happened:

Score!

... and, although this 'never happened', we're keeping the award... we had one in the old hood, so its only fair... :)

Maybe Samantha really should be worried about her job now... its not like they're not coping without her... :)