Community Lot Skilling.

Tuesday, Yulia went straight home from her store, bought a chessboard, and sat down to increase her Logic so that she could improve her cash register skills.

Tuesday evening, the time came for the twins to grow up. Yanastasia was first,

and grew up into a nice-looking young girl.

Her dad immediately taught her how to do homework (using older sister’s Yevgenya’s assignment).

Then, it was Yedrek’s turn.

Yed was so high in “Active” that he immediately started bowling.

Yana showed that she shared the family interest in reading cookbooks

Genya got up from her nap just as Yana was going to sleep,

and was delighted with the new chessboard.

She played chess with her mother well into the night.

Wednesday morning, there was so much snow that school was canceled!

Genya and Yana enjoyed pelting each other with snowballs,

while Yed built a snowman.

Once the butler arrived for the day, Yulia left for her store.

She assigned Shelby to the register, and both Bruce and Komei to restocking,

and Christian to make more snapdragons, then sat down to play chess with Troy, who had a want to gain a skill point.

Very soon, Troy had a Logic point, and with it gained a Gold mood and 1,000 aspiration points, and so was able to get and wear a thinking cap.

By evening, the store had reached Rank 9.

Yulia noticed that Shelby was in a Red mood, and wanted a skill point,

so she sent the young woman on break, which Shelby enjoyed,

and took over the register herself.

(She had taken the precaution of resetting the prices of all of her merchandise,

figuring that “Average” would slow down both the number of customers waiting to be rung up, and the demands on her restockers.)

Bruce earned a Silver restocking badge! Yulia congratulated herself for sticking with him, despite his early unsatisfactory performance.

Because Yulia was busy on the register, she had Troy, one of her Managers, give Bruce a raise.

And soon thereafter, Yulia had Troy close the business for the day, because—though her register skills were supposedly a bit better now that she had maxed out Logic—she still couldn’t keep up with the customers.

She also had Troy send Christian and Shelby home for the day. Troy crawled into one of the tents for some sleep, and Yulia, noticing that Komei wanted to reach Level 5 in Logic, played chess with him for a while, before heading home to her family.

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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

Thanks very much to SirenPrincess for telling me yesterday that there’s a mod at MATY that allows skilling on community lots! I THINK this is the link below (but today MATY won’t let me in for some bizarre reason (and it accused me of being a "bran muffin" ??? when I tried to register anew!). I agree with SP that this mod is NOT cheating; it’s only reasonable that a Sim should be able to build a lot where she/her employees/her customers can skill. (That’s just real life.)

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11216.0.html

When Yulia was trying to leave the house for her store this a.m., she clicked on her car and got "Go Somewhere". As soon as she passed her kids playing in the snow in the front yard, though, her car interaction disappeared, and the only one available was "Take to School". It was a SNOW DAY!!! So, in order to go to her store for the day, she had no choice but to take the kids to school, even when there was only an hour left in the school day....

Here’s something I always forget—once you promote an employee to Manager, and he becomes controllable, the way to get him to restock is to make him the active Sim, have him click on himself, and pick “Restock”. I was getting frustrated having Yulia click on Troy, then click “Management”, and the “Assign” option wasn’t there. This doesn’t happen with the register, because Yulia can just click on the register and “Assign” comes up. (Same with the flower arranging bench.)

I noticed a pile of shopping bags on the floor, so exited without saving and went back in to see what had happened. Matthew Smith had been the only person in line, and Shelby was at the register, and she still had “Be Cashier” active, but she inexplicably wasn’t ringing Matthew up. I clicked on “Ring Up These Customers”, and she rang up Matthew, but the problem kept happening. Her motives were all fully green (because of the snapdragons), except that her Energy was about half. Her mood was red, though, and she had a want to earn a skill point, so I sent her to play chess.

Remember that raising the merchandise prices temporarily will slow down traffic at the cash register, and also the pace at which the restockers have to keep up with their task. It's up to you what you want to accomplish at any given time--do you want to be selling Ridiculously Cheap items (and thereby increasing the customer loyalty stars/Business Rank), or do you want to take a couple of hours to increase a Sim's register skill without chaos (i.e., littered shopping bags everywhere) ensuing?

Another great thing about Managers is that they can—as Troy did tonight—take over Management functions from your owner. Believe me, Yulia could NOT have spared the time away from the register to give Bruce a raise or close the store for the day!