The Rank 10 Emporium.

As soon as her home sports venue reached Rank 10 on Friday afternoon, Yulia headed out to her store.

She called in her employees and, when she didn’t get any messages that any of them were too tired to come into work, she opened the store.

Remembering that she had left her merchandise prices at “Average” the night before (to slow down the customer traffic and minimize their expectations for both her cashier skills and her increasingly tired restockers), she immediately changed the prices back to “Ridiculously Cheap.”

The store needed only 15 more customer loyalty stars in order to reach Rank 10,

so Yulia’s approach was to gain those stars as quickly as possible via rock-bottom prices.

But, she had her eye on a huge and beautiful new estate for her family to live on, and feared she didn’t have quite enough money to afford it and the new community lot she needed to buy (even given her available cash, the sales price of the family’s current home, and the sales price of Yulia’s Emporium). So, she set the price of only one flamingo to $9,999,

which she planned to sell only to those who could afford it.

She succeeded with Meadow Pedersen,

then Christy Stratton, Leo Willkie, Goopy GilsCarbo, Melissa Fancey, and Gordon Wolosenko,

before she started to get fatigued, and figured she’d better use the Energizer while she was still in a Gold mood.

Then she was able to Dazzle Joe Carr, and Kennedy Cox.

Shelby was getting tired, and wanted to gain Charisma points, so Yulia told her to take a break, hoping that the young woman would be in a good enough mood to use the Energizer.

Troy took over the register,

but Yulia quickly saw that customers were already starting to get annoyed and, since Shelby had tired of skilling and had gone to take a nap,

Yulia quickly changed the price of all her merchandise to $9,999, and gave all her employees a break (since none of them were in good enough moods to Energize).

While most of her employees napped in tents, Yulia kept her store open, and made another high-priced sale to Kennedy Cox, and one to Sandy Bruty,

though Yulia’s poor register skills still annoyed her customers.

She finally got her Bronze register badge while she was ringing up Kennedy Cox.

She also made another $9,999 sale to Christy Stratton.

After ringing up Christy, Yulia—who had not used the Energizer at all while she’d been pregnant—used it again today, in an effort to get the store to Rank 10.

Komei woke up of his own accord, and resumed his restocking duties without being asked.

Yulia then made another high-priced sale to Joe Carr, another to Christy Stratton, and her first to Andrea Hogan.

Yulia had been so absorbed with her selling that she hadn’t even noticed that all her other employees were fully rested from sleeping in the tents,

and she had them resume their assignments.

Yulia got yet another Best of the Best award!

Soon thereafter, Komei earned his Silver restocking badge, and Yulia gave him a raise.

Although the store needed only 1 more customer loyalty star to reach Rank 10,

Yulia was so tired (and only in a Green mood), that she had to take a nap.

Almost as soon as she entered the tent, though, the store became a Top-Level Business!

Yulia had now achieved 3 Top-Level Businesses:

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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

When your employees first arrive for the day, do a quick check of their “Employee Information” to make sure they don’t consider themselves “Underpaid”. Though Yulia is quite fastidious about giving her employees a raise whenever they increase a badge level, 3 of the 5 of them showed up today describing themselves as underpaid (probably a glitch), and she had to do “Change Wage” again to all three.

This is a sneaky little thing the game does to screw with us—you’ll get no warning that the employee thinks he’s underpaid. You’ll know only when he abruptly quits! So, you have to be proactive and check the Employee Information. And, of course, do “Change Wage” whenever an employee gets a new badge.

Sometimes, your owner Sim will have to “Greet” a customer in order to do a sales interaction with him (such as “Sales – Show Item To …”).

I wish I’d thought of today’s idea long ago: raise all prices to $9,999, and let all the employees sleep in tents while Yulia makes some high-priced sales and handles the register and restocking duties herself. Previously, I just had her close the store when her employees got tired, which is not an optimal approach, because all the customers go away, and the sleepy employees have to drag their butts out of the tents in order to leave the lot when Yulia does. Even though the customers won’t autonomously buy the flamingos at $9,999, they still seem happy to hang around the store—they watched movies, played chess, etc., and the snapdragons kept their Motives high.

All the employees woke up completely refreshed, which means that tents are more comfortable in Sims 2 than they are in real life! FYI, tents came with Bon Voyage, and are in Buy Mode under Comfort – Miscellaneous.

Some employees will automatically resume work, and some won’t. Remember, NEVER use “Management – Get Back to Work” (it makes the employees mad). If the employee is a Manager, make him the active Sim, have him click on himself, and you will see the “Restock” option, for example. If the employee is not a Manager, you can click on the register to get “Assign Cashier”, for example.

If you can keep your employees on the lot, you won’t run into the problem Yulia ran into several times this week of an employee claiming to be too tired to come into work. Especially since I think this claim is, to some extent, randomly generated by the game. (I love outsmarting the game.)

Chelsea asked in her comment to the previous post whether beds would work as well as tents. As I remember, they don’t—a tired employee can “Relax” on a bed (at least at a home venue; I’m not sure about community lots), but not sleep.

Yulia made more than $150,000 in this latest session at her store, which lasted from 4:06 p.m. Friday to Saturday 10:20 p.m. And, since time doesn’t pass at the home lot while a Sim is at a community lot, that means Yulia didn’t age! I now think it’s entirely possible to achieve the 5 Top-Level Biz LTW before your Sim becomes an elder, without any cheats or even the Elixir of Life. And I certainly think that the EASIEST AND FASTEST LTW OF ALL is: “Earn $100,000.” I think when I’m done with this blog I’ll experiment with that. Even starting with a CAS Sim, I’m guessing it can be done in a couple/three Sim days.