All my staff quit? «12...Next Go

MinnieMouse

I got Dine Out last night and started a brand new save to avoid possible issues with pre-existing games and staff culling. My restaurant is doing great, up to 5 stars. I've trained and promoted my staff along the way so that they at least remain neutral (having trouble getting beyond that, but at least they aren't unsatisfied). And then suddenly, I got a notification that my restaurant was no longer functional. Checked my staff panel and they are all gone. I can rehire them again, so they weren't culled. But I can only hire the chef for the waitress position, the host for the chef position, etc. Anyone else have this problem and know what causes it/how to prevent it in the future?

I don't play with mods or CC, so that's not the issue.

Edit to add that I deleted enough unplayed households to be able to hire back my same employees to their previous positions - but unfortunately, they seem to have lost a substantial amount of skill.

rosemow

Hello
Although this wasn't the case with your issue, to prevent future culling of your employees, try doing the suggestion in this link.
http://sims4.crinrict.com/en/2016/06/restaurant-employees-and-culling/

MinnieMouse

Thanks rosemow - I did actually do that just now as a preventative measure. I was retracing my steps, and remembered that I threw a social event which included my employees just a few hours before they "disappeared" from the roster. I may save my game and then try that to see if it happens again. Other than that, I can't think of anything I had done differently on that day that might correlate to their mysterious departure.

Edit to add that repeating an identical social event does not cause the disappearance. Must just be some kind of glitch because I don't know what else might have triggered it.

HowGreatThouArt

I had a similar problem. I rebuilt my restaurant and consequently lost all of my employees. They're still available for re-hire, but like you said, they aren't all available for the same positions and lost many of their skills. Kind of annoying.

Edit: I was able to re-hire them for the same positions but they still lost their skills.

crinrict

I've seen that and I don't know if that's on purpose or not. It's like it doesn't matter what actual skill level they have.

Can you try putting them in a house and check what skill level they actually have ? Then close without saving ?

Just wondering if they actually loose skill or if the bar just doesn't reflect them properly.

MinnieMouse

@crinrict I did put them in a house, but did not check skill level. I will try that tonight and let you know.

jacqpinks

The game is so annoying that it doesn't retain certain information like names on graves or even who painted a painting if you share or upload things but it is really sad that staff don't retain the skills that they have required

Nectere

My first restaurant went from 5 stars one night to a staff walk out the next, it was if a virus spread through them like wildfire, first the host, then the chef and next thing you know our ever faithful waiter is calling it quits because ya know, the restaurant isnt functional since everyone else left, and things were going so well! It all happened so quickly. I wasnt really paying attention but I think one of them was disgruntled and..I have no idea really. There was a lot of sudden stomping and leaving. I could not hire any of them back, even though I had trained them all. I backed out of the save. waaaay too realistic

MinnieMouse

Nectere wrote: »

My first restaurant went from 5 stars one night to a staff walk out the next, it was if a virus spread through them like wildfire, first the host, then the chef and next thing you know our ever faithful waiter is calling it quits because ya know, the restaurant isnt functional since everyone else left, and things were going so well! It all happened so quickly. I wasnt really paying attention but I think one of them was disgruntled and..I have no idea really. There was a lot of sudden stomping and leaving. I could not hire any of them back, even though I had trained them all. I backed out of the save. waaaay too realistic

That's a bummer... Did you get actual notifications saying they quit? Because I did not. Just a generic message saying "your restaurant is no longer functional," which is why I think it may be a bug. That plus the fact that they all disappeared at once, and they were all neutral up until that point.

MinnieMouse

@crinrict I followed your suggestion, and all the sims' skills are as high as I trained them to (levels 7-9 depending on the sim and skill). But when I try to rehire them, they are only level 1-3 in those same skills

So I guess they are actually building their skills in the restaurant, and they don't "lose" skill per se, but when I rehire them the level isn't showing properly.

I'm going to try exiting without saving, reloading, hiring them back, then moving them into a household again & checking skill to see if it has decreased to the level I hired them at.

Ok, tried that and their skill had dropped to the level of hire. So it appears that it does not matter what skill level the sim has prior to being hired. The hiring dialog assigns a random skill level to each sim, which takes effect once they are hired into the restaurant, overwriting any skill level they were at.

This makes sense with the developers' original intent of only hiring unplayed, unhoused sims. Prior skill level wouldn't matter, and would be randomly generated by the hiring dialog. But for those who have used the workaround to hire their own created sims (or us who somehow lose all our staff at once), this is a frustrating (but as I said, understandable) design.

CorkysPetals

Well I just had this experience. Last time I played a saved game, all the employees were... employed. I just opened the save, sent my manager to the lot to do some after hours managing and all 5 employees slots were empty and my none of my old employees were in the hiring pool. All of them were still the "not in world" part of household management, however.

I did so something unusual though. The last thing I did before I saved the old game was to go into household management do a lot of deleting and reconstructive surgery of the townies, both in world and not in world.

So, did any of you actively cull or edit your townies in household management before losing your employees?

CorkysPetals

I treated it like a crisis at the restaurant. Hired new staff, changed the menu and dropped the prices. My star rating is going down, but I'll try to keep the customers happy.

MinnieMouse

CorkysPetals wrote: »

Well I just had this experience. Last time I played a saved game, all the employees were... employed. I just opened the save, sent my manager to the lot to do some after hours managing and all 5 employees slots were empty and my none of my old employees were in the hiring pool. All of them were still the "not in world" part of household management, however.

I did so something unusual though. The last thing I did before I saved the old game was to go into household management do a lot of deleting and reconstructive surgery of the townies, both in world and not in world.

So, did any of you actively cull or edit your townies in household management before losing your employees?

@corkyspetals I did modify the appearance of one of my employees, but it was a couple weeks between that and my "mass departure." I haven't edited any other townies.

As far as I can remember, the only thing different I did that day was to take the day off (sim is employed in culinary career) and host a dinner party at my sim's house. She invited all her employees, so I thought that might have been the culprit. But I could not reproduce the issue after hosting several identical dinner parties, so now I don't know.

Is there anything else you did differently that day that might be our "common denominator"? Because your issue sounds exactly like what happened to me.

crinrict

Thanks for testing .. not liking

I do believe that editing can have a influence. When you play them, they'll loose their employee status.

I shall try in my game.

Tagging @SimGuruNinja for some insight on the skill level.

Aine

Does anyone know what happens to skill vs ability to serve dishes in NPC restaurants? I don't imagine you have to play a restaurant and get the employees skills high enough to serve the high skill dishes?

I don't see why it would be necessary for the game to set the skill level to a low one since we're supposed to use the newly generated npc's anyway. But the idea in itself is annoying. We're allowed to choose which skill level the employees are on, since we choose the employees, and if the skill level and salary we payed were linked that's all that we need really.

Btw I use the UI cheat mod to change the skill level of my employees when I want to.

MinnieMouse

crinrict wrote: »

Thanks for testing .. not liking

I do believe that editing can have a influence. When you play them, they'll loose their employee status.

I shall try in my game.

Tagging @SimGuruNinja for some insight on the skill level.

Well I just turned testing cheats on and then shift-clicked the employee to edit (and again - only one of the staff). I didn't actually load up the household. And it was a couple weeks before my staff all left me, so I don't think it was correlated in my case. But depending on how @CorkysPetals edited their sims, that could definitely be the cause for them..

And I'm with you @crinrict - I don't like the skill thing at all. I can understand why it might be that way, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

crinrict

I tried editing the Sims through the household manager and they were not thrown out of their job doing so.

CorkysPetals

I just tried editing the non-employee townie not in world and that didn't make my employees quit.

MinnieMouse

CorkysPetals wrote: »

I just tried editing the non-employee townie not in world and that didn't make my employees quit.

So I'm not the only one then! Sorry to take joy in your hardship, but misery loves company, lol. Though it sounds like you made the best of it!

crinrict

Is that in the save you sent me ? Was the save before or after your staff was kicked out ?

MinnieMouse

@crinrict Haha yes. Same save I gave you on Answers HQ. That was from after the staff were kicked out and I hired them back and had been playing for a while more. But I have a separate save from right after they were kicked out if you want it.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything from before that because for some stupid reason I saved right after I got the notification that my restaurant wasn't functional... *bangs head against wall*

crinrict

A right before would have been great but no worries.

MinnieMouse

crinrict wrote: »

A right before would have been great but no worries.

I will double check the save version files (should have thought of that before) and see if there is one, but I doubt I have one right before... But I
will definitely look when I get home.

MinnieMouse

@crinrict I went back through the version files. Looks like the staff quit at about 4 AM on a Monday morning. I had a version file from 2 PM on the Saturday before. Not sure if it will be any help, but here is a link to a zip with both saves: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mi2n7zp0bqnzl44/Staff Quit.zip?dl=0

I had just hired a new staff member as of the "Before" save, so I wasn't too hurt by his departure. But the other 3 were pretty sad (as you will see, their skill levels were pretty high). Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you look into this.

crinrict

OK. I'll take a look but can't make a promise to when

MinnieMouse

crinrict wrote: »

OK. I'll take a look but can't make a promise to when

No rush.