Working glitch?

[oshizu]

I'm starting a new thread because I couldn't find a similar topic under Miscellaneous Help.
In my immortal dynasty, my Generation 3's work is acting oddly.

Question 1: When on vacation at Granite Falls, shouldn't a household member at home go to work?
When the household went to Granite Falls recently, I sent her (Gen3) and another household member (painter) home because they had to work in a few hours.
I got a notice at Granite Falls, saying the painter left for work on time. 
When the household returned a day later, I found the Gen3 heir had never left for work at all and her performance had dropped.
While at home, she wasn't assigned any skilling or other task because I worried about her becoming "pre-occupied."

Question 2: When it's "Time for work," I get a reset message about "Work in 24 hours" or something like that and, again, her performance dropped.
Just now, it was a little over a hour before she started work at 2 pm.
Grandpa did the "Discuss Visualizing Techniques" convo to boost her Inspiration, then she drank an Essence of Inspiration potion.
At 2pm sharp, the "Work in xx houirs/minutes" briefly switched to "Work in 24 hours," then her performance dropped again.
Around 2:04pm, it switched again to "Time to Work," and she changed clothes and left for work.

My save file recently became unplayable so I had to do that "restore file without reinstalling the game" procedure.
I was quite panicked and had almost given up on this dynasty.
Now I'm wondering if these work-related issues (only with the heir, darnit) is also a bug. 
Or is this a common (unresolved) issue that I don't know how to workaround.

Oops, sorry for the long post.
TLDR; (1) If the fam is in Granite Falls, a sim left at home won't go to work properly (but other sims do) and takes a promotion-related performance hit.
          (2) When it's time for work, a "Work in 24 hours" briefly appears after which the "Time for Work" message appears in several sim minutes, but only after a performance hit.

Thanks for reading. 

[Playalot]

Hi oshizu, sounds like you've been hit with a career bug. There is nothing reported that exactly matches your problems but this sounds very much like the career bug that hit when Get To Work was first released. There are a few things that you can try the first is to take out any CC or mods, which I'm sure you've either done or don't use. Then clear the cache files out.
Next have the entire household travel to a different lot and back. Traveling with the household resets them.
The next is to have the sim quit their job and then clear your cache folder. Then on reloading your game get your sim to reapply for the same job. Hopefully that may solve the issues. It's unfortunate as I've had sims on holiday and they can leave for work from GF perfectly as well as sims left at home who automatically go to work perfectly.

If your sim still isn't going to work as he/she should then you might be forced to save them to your library and then save their house. (Just in case anything goes wrong.) Then move them all into another house temporarily. Bulldoze the original lot and replace it with their house from your library. Move them back in... and hopefully problem solved.

I realize that because this is your dynasty file that these solutions do not lie within the rules but I don't know what else to suggest. Meanwhile I'll keep looking around and hopefully find something else to post back for you to try.


*edited: Did you save your game and quit it while one of your sims was at work? This has been known to cause problems since the Dec 4th patch. For now it's better to wait until all your sims are home before quitting. Also cancel any whims to do with wanting a promotion as this whim has been linked with career problems too.

[oshizu]

@Playalot
Thank you for all the possible workarounds for my not-going-to-work and dropped-performance issues.
I know your dynasty seemed to have gotten hit with every existing glitch, so I appreciate your advice that's based on experience.
It's really odd that I'm having issues with the only sim in the house whose career promotions I'm focused on, lol.

Gen3 left for work normally just now. She's 7 days from Adulthood and 2/3 tick away from Level 9 of her career.
So, the work-related issues will not prevent her from completing her requirements nor has the entire household experienced them.
But still, these things haven't happened to me before and I'd like to be prepared.
Like, know I now not to visit Granite Falls only during my priority sim's days off.

I did very recently restore my game files and I delete cache files regularly. I also welcomed your recent reminder on this forum about not stacking more than 99 items in inventory (individ. or family) or the fridge. I don't use mods or cc.
And I will be careful, as you note, about not saving and quitting while a sims is at work. I never knew.

A few more questions:
1) When a sim quits their job, how can they get rehired at the same level?  (I have a sim with Connections who took a certain job for Renaissance Sim; a few job switches later and one day of work at another job, I decided to go back to that first job. He was level 1)
2) Because my save file was unplayable for a while, I did save both lot and household to library, because restoring the game files and delete cache didn't work. Is a dynasty file more prone to this kind of file corruption because it gets so large?
3) Thanks for your tip about not quitting/saving while my sims are at work. A similar thing happens when I go into CAS from a dresser; when I exit, anyone who'd been at work has returned home. Grrrr.  I assume the saving/quitting while at work as well as usiing CAS also apply to children at school?

Sorry to reply to your answers with more questions.   

[Playalot]

That's fine to ask questions, if I can't answer them someone else will and/or have better solutions than mine. I'm having problems with my sims not getting promoted despite having met all requirements and I can't find a proper work around it so I know just how frustrating these kind of bugs are.

1. You can't enter at the same level, unfortunately your sim will always re-enter a career one level lower. He shouldn't have gone right back to level 1 though, only to level 3 from level four and so on.
2. I suspect this is the case. I think the more items on a lot and in sims inventories etc the more chance for bugs and general slowness. My file was huge by the end of my dynasty but then again my sims were hoarders and my basements were absolutely filled with items.
3. Yes, saving/quitting and using CAS all seem to cause problems at the moment with sims at work and perhaps school too. I'm hopefully that January might see a patch to fix some of these issues.

[Playalot]

@oshizu found this bug report on the issue of your sim starting at L1 again. Link Seems like it's a known bug.

[oshizu]

@oshizu found this bug report on the issue of your sim starting at L1 again. Link Seems like it's a known bug.

Thank you for the link which I read. 
This problem is entirely avoidable. When switching careers for Renaissance Sim, I need to think more carefully about which careers to select.
I love Secret Agent because of the great career-reward chairs. I'd just never dropped from Level 4 to Level 1. Fortunately, it was a helper.

My file was huge by the end of my dynasty but then again my sims were hoarders and my basements were absolutely filled with items.

My sims are always hoarders as well.  It takes forever to load though, even with traveling, that I'm working hard to keep just one of everything (not essences, mood potions, and ambrosia ingredients) while muttering my mantra "the home lot has 2 cloning machines and the retail lot, one." I don't follow the Gen2 Scientist anymore to work, but he still hasn't made all the potions. After that, I can stop hoarding serum ingredients? What are you hoarding?

On another note, I noticed that my sims who leveled both Cooking and Gourmet skills no longer have time limits on their baked goods. I wonder if that's a temporary glitch or in place for bakery-bent simmers.

[Playalot]

I horded everything lol. All the ingredients for my scientist (Dude) all the serums, all the paintings that didn't make it into the museum and there were 100's, the list just goes on. It was crazy but I kept thinking I might need something later!

Re: cooking/gourmet cooking question: did your sims also complete the Master Chef aspiration? If so the reward trait on that is that food never spoils. If not, then it could be another bug. *sigh*

[oshizu]

I horded everything lol. All the ingredients for my scientist (Dude) all the serums, all the paintings that didn't make it into the museum and there were 100's, the list just goes on. It was crazy but I kept thinking I might need something later!

Re: cooking/gourmet cooking question: did your sims also complete the Master Chef aspiration? If so the reward trait on that is that food never spoils. If not, then it could be another bug. *sigh*

How did you manage with your huge household inventory?
I'm asking becauuse my Gen5 is a few days away from teen and I've been having lots of issues lately with saving and loading.
you're trying to load a save file that is new than the installed version, can't save file error 533, infinite loading times (every trip makes me nervous), and so forth.
I'm constantly repairing my game and deleting cache files. I do that restoring game files without re-installing every several days.

P.S. Where did you have your museum? On the home lot?

I got a little too excited about that new IDC rule about redecorating club hangouts. I think I'm going to go delete my redecorations to all but one or two lots.
Will probably sell the retail store as well. I know how that works and having the store encourages me to save paintings and other items instead of selling them off.
Gahhhh.  Just now I couldn't save so I traveled to another lot and could save. I really need to clean up all the inventories.  *dejected

[Playalot]

I guess I just put up with the longer loading times and compared to TS3 even the longest loading time wasn't too bad. I had my museum in the basement on the home lot, has to be there according to rules. It after a few generations it was inaccessible to sims as I deleted the stairs etc.

I also bought a retail lot, made a basement and stored a lot of items there. As well as transferring household funds over after I reached the games limit.

I didn't ever encounter error 533. Still haven't so I'm not sure about that.