"Missing Work" Glitch

HappySimMax

I have a Sims 3 game issue - my sim progressed to the top of the Medical career, no cheats.
I read from a previous thread that someone had a similar issue, but none were really answered and I've tried most fixing methods.

My household consists of 4 adults, 1 teenager and 4 pets.
An opportunity window popped up, inviting my adult sims to take a free vacation and leave the teenagers at home. This was the first time I ever used this option.
When they came back, all was fine except for my main sim: she was attending work in the appropriate hours, but her work performance meter was in the red, and I received a pop-up warning that she was going to get [demoted/fired]. I was surprised as I was getting her to work on time in a good mood and staying at the appropriate hours. She got demoted to level 9 the next day.
I studied this issue closer, and noticed that every time she finished work for the day, it said "Missing Work!" So when she finished, she would be losing work performance immediately.
After 4 days of keeping my eye on it, I was having to use cheats so she wouldn't die of sleep deprivation/hunger/etc. Here is what info I gathered about the glitch:

Day 3: Level 9 Medical career. 9am - 5pm
-Finished at 6:30pm, paid 40k, promoted to level 10. "Missing Work"
-Started 7pm

Day 4: Level 10 Medical career. 9am - 2pm
- @ 2pm she was paid 5k for 'personal time off'.
-Finished 6:30pm, paid 27k. "Missing Work"

Quit job, joined again @ 7pm.
Level 1, 9am to 6pm. "Missing Work"
Level 10 (using cheats), out of hours "Missing Work"

I understand that surgeons can be called in at any time, but she wasn't called in at all. She was expected to work 24/7, not eating or sleeping because other wise her work performance was in the red. Her job was fine until she went on the free vacation. None of the other sims have this issue.

Issues that have been tested:

• Someone had mentioned it was a custom uniform issue, but I have not personalised the uniforms of any of my sims in this game.
• My other sims do not have this issue in other careers or the same career.
• It is only the glitched sim with this issue, no matter what career she joins.
• I also have never used mods in sims, and don't have any installed now.

Methods I've tried:

• Restarting the game numerous times
• Restarting the computer
• Deleting cache files
• Quitting and rejoining the job

I have not yet tried to reinstall the base game, as it's too much trouble to install the 10+ expansions I have installed. I have had the same expansions installed for several months without any issues like this, and have not came across this issue before.

TLDR: My sim took a free vacation and when she got back, she was "missing work" as soon as she wasn't in her workplace.

Any easy fixes are welcome, if not, I'll just try reinstalling all the expansions all over again...

igazor

I'm afraid that reinstalling your game or your expansions is not going to fix this one.

Try this. Retreat to Edit Town, evict your entire household to the side of the screen, copy their residential lot down to the bin, bulldoze the original, and replace it with a copy. Then move everyone back in without having left the screen. That often does enough of a reset to break such bad and stuck cycles.

If that doesn't do it, you could try bulldozing the hospital and replacing it with another one, but I think that might bump your sim's career level back down to half of what it was (4 or 5) when they rejoin without mods to adjust that and their pension upon retirement will be ruined.

Going forward, the best advice about the adults' free vacation that came with Generations is to avoid it at all costs. Even mods can't fix that one, it has caused more glitches and outright broken, unfixable games since inception than anyone can count.

Atm1996

Hello, I've been playing TS3 for a while now. I have Late Night, Generations, Seasons, and Pets EPs all installed. I am experiencing sort of the same problem and I have tried what igazor suggested and no such luck. I have deleted caches and restarted the game, but still nothing. If anyone has any more suggestions please respond!

igazor

Atm1996 wrote: »

Hello, I've been playing TS3 for a while now. I have Late Night, Generations, Seasons, and Pets EPs all installed. I am experiencing sort of the same problem and I have tried what igazor suggested and no such luck. I have deleted caches and restarted the game, but still nothing. If anyone has any more suggestions please respond!

Hi there. In the future, I would suggest not posting the same question on three different message sub-boards here. You will end up with three different conversations with some of the same forum members that will tend to be more confusing than helpful.

One thing that we know used to trigger this issue is shifts that cross midnight because the game gets confused as to which are the sim's working days. But at Level 10 in that career, this couldn't be the cause.

From the further information you have on your home page, this was brought about by the Generations EP adult vacation scenario. If the suggested fixes above, a total household reset involving bulldozing the residential lot/replacing it with a copy and then replacing the hospital did not help, I am afraid that your sim is corrupt and there is no solution short of reverting play to a prior save if you have one from before the vacation opportunity came up, and if it does again do not accept it. If not averse to using mods, an NRaas MasterController reset of the sim first and then perhaps the entire town (run from City Hall) might help but in this case expectations would be a bit low for that one.

The scenario breaks players' games, not always but often enough, always has, and neither EA nor mods have been able to fix these things. We always advise players to reject the offer or at the very least have a safe Save As to revert to in case things go wrong.

phoebebebe13

@igazor another thing to ask is if the sim is pregnant. I get those notices my sims missed work while they were pregnant and have off of work. I just ignore it. It goes away @Atm1996

igazor

I've had sims on paid parental leave have the "Time to go to work soon" reminders showing up and even the carpool appear and start honking when it shouldn't have, those are easy to ignore. But I've never seen it say "Missing Work" in red on their career info tab especially outside of their scheduled working hours and had their work performance scores degrade continuously until they started dropping job levels, which is what I thought the problems here were.