Sims not at work when joining family

[Bobbins]

I have a question, don't know if this is a bug or a feature or just me.

Does everyone suffer from the issue that, when starting to play a family (after previously playing a different family), members of that household who should be at work are at home with a red flashing work icon? E.g. join in afternoon, and someone who should have started work at 9am is still standing around outside their house.

I have had this for a long time, and figured it must be a bug that would be fixed in due course, but am on latest patch and still no dice. I also considered it could be related to a mod, but I'm using very few mods and have tried renaming the mods folder and still got the issue.

I also tried very hard to find out about this on google, but it seems like "sims not going to work" means "sims get to work" (expansion) as far as search results are concerned!

Hope it's not a feature, thanks!

[grimsoul]

When switching between households it seems this always happens. When you switch just send them to work and let them finish the day out.

[Bobbins]

Thanks Grimsoul, when I've tried this in the past they get a negative impact on their performance at the end of the working day (presumably because of being very late). Do you not find this to be the case? Haven't tried in a while, but would be glad to hear that your mileage varies.

[MarianT]

Welcome to the forum, Bobbin!

Unfortunately, this is not caused by a mod. And Grimsoul's suggestion to just let them go to work is okay unless you're trying to get a sim promoted. The sim will take a hit in promotion progress when late to work and could even be demoted.

If you're playing rotationally, and you want your sims to progress quickly at work, the only thing you can do is keep track of your sims' working hours and try not to change households at a time when the sims at the next household in line should be at work.

[Bobbins]

Oh dear, well, thanks for clarifying MarianT!

Too bad the game doesn't tell you the (in-game) time when you're at the house selection screen. Have often thought this would be a nice feature! (More often than not I'm switching houses when starting up the game with no clue what in-game time of day I left it).

Don't suppose there's any clever way of telling, short of loading up a family?

[Playalot]

Your reloaded game should be about 5 minutes on from where you last saved and quit. So take note of the time and day just before you quit.

[MarianT]

It also helps to switch families between midnight and 5 am; unless you have sims in the Culinary or Criminal careers, they're less likely to be working then.

[TheGoat]

Oh dear, well, thanks for clarifying MarianT!

Too bad the game doesn't tell you the (in-game) time when you're at the house selection screen. Have often thought this would be a nice feature! (More often than not I'm switching houses when starting up the game with no clue what in-game time of day I left it).

Don't suppose there's any clever way of telling, short of loading up a family?

If your various households are friends with each other, you can see other sims' work schedules by hovering over them in the relationships panel (assuming you have asked them their career at some point). I believe this little detail is new in a recent patch.

[Bobbins]

Thanks for the tips/workarounds!

Hopefully the underlying issue gets fixed at some point.

All we need is for them to be teleported to work when their lot loads, with no performance gain/loss!

Sounds easy enough, I expect there's some technical reason why it hasn't been done yet.