I have not used architect here, but that's only because this career tends to glitch out on me to the point where it's unplayable in any town, not just MF - the only profession that caused me even more problems is fashion designer, where I ended up having to force close the game in every town I've tried it in, and I've given up on that career at this point. Having said that, I think the Ambitions careers are buggy in general, and from my experience with firefighting, they seem to be buggier in this town than others - come to think of it, my attempt at firefighting had a similar bug as you with items not being checked off (number of sims saved, doors broken, etc.) and the inability to cancel the job myself (I had to wait for the timer to run out and the job to fail. not even leaving the property would end it). While I've had bugs with firefighting, PI, and ghost hunter in pretty much all the towns I've played in, the bugs are usually annoying but minor issues rather than game-breaking - MF has been the only exception to that rule, at least in my experience.