Resto Opening— Part 3.

With her display cases rapidly becoming more more empty, Yulia quickly repriced the take-out food to Expensive to slow down demand, and restocked what she could. She checked in with Troy (because he was doing sous-chef duty, trying to get to Level 3 in Cooking), and with the regular sous-chef, Marisa. Both were in good spirits, and said they could continue turning out mac and cheese for a while yet.

Christian did show up at the restaurant again, but interfered with the business by telling Shelby (who was already Ridiculously Overpaid) that she deserved more money!

“Why don’t you get rid of that guy?,"” Derek asked his wife.

“Believe me, if I knew ANYONE else with a Gold badge in flower arranging, his butt would be out the door,” she replied.

“But, still, I don’t think he made one single snapdragon since he showed up yesterday,” Derek persisted. “You’re running around all over the place, but I’m out back here all the time, and I can tell you Christian did NOTHING productive yesterday.”

Yulia sent Christian back to the flower arranging station, and when he again didn’t make any snapdragons, she sent him home for the day.

Shelby autonomously sprayed the latest infestation of roaches, cursing the Evil Witch under her breath.

Despite the roaches, the inventory shortage, and the price change to “Expensive,” customers were still gaining stars, and the resto reached Rank 7.

Marisa needed to take a nap, so Yevgenya eagerly filled in for her. The teen particularly liked working alongside her father.

“I think I want to be a chef, Dad,” she announced.

Rodney, who had been working as Host for a few hours, earned a Bronze badge in Sales,

and Yulia quickly gave him a raise, promoted him to Manager, and upgraded his uniform.

Unfortunately, while Yulia was taking care of this employee matter, she received a bad review!

And the reviewer left before Yulia could even ask him what it was that he didn’t like.

With both Troy and Marisa cooking take-out food, and Komei’s strong restocking skills, the staff was managing to keeping the display cases filled.

‘I guess the reviewer thinks my prices are too high,’ Yulia mused.

She knew that a bad review meant a reduction in walk-in traffic, so she got on the phone and asked a few of her friends to come over, in order to keep the number of customers up.

In short order the resto had 5 customers dining at the same time (a record).

Poor Rodney ran into trouble, though, while trying to serve Allyn Thompson:

Rodney quickly replaced Allyn’s entrée,

and Yulia had him tell the woman that her dinner was on the house.

Since Yulia had succeeded in steering all the take-out customers to the dining room,

Komei was able to leave his restocking duties and help out as a Server.

Yulia had a Want to purchase a community lot, so picked the cheapest one available just to improve her aspiration, figuring she could sell the lot later.

Yulia actually paid only $900 for the lot, because she got a discount on everything.

The transaction immediately put her into Platinum aspiration, and she was able to use the Energizer.

Marisa maxed out enthusiasm for Cooking and was in the Zone!

And the resto reached Rank 8.

But, as Yulia looked around her, she saw disaster looming.

She had 3 employees sleeping (Rodney, Shelby, and Troy),

and Komei (who was exhausted) was just about to join them.

So was Bruce, who was close to cratering.

And the take-out entrees—even priced expensively--were nearly gone….

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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

It seems like every time I shut down the game for the day and come back in, one or more employees/managers are underpaid, so I’ve decided to try to keep track of this. Today, Yulia gave Troy a raise so that he would be “Fairly Paid” at $64. Later, I exited the resto to create a tiny, cheap community lot for Yulia to purchase, and came back in to find that Troy was now “Underpaid” even though his wage hadn’t changed. Though he hasn’t earned any more badge points, he HAS been spending a lot of time as sous-chef, and so has improved his Cooking to Level 4. Maybe that’s why he deserves a raise?

The plot thickens: Rodney also showed up as Underpaid. Yulia gave him a raise to $50 when he earned his Bronze Sales badge. Since then, he’s worked mostly as a Server (and of course dumped food all over poor Allyn Thompson). But I guess he’s building Cleaning skill, so that must be why HE deserves a raise. But look at this:

Notice that Rodney’s wage in the Business Interface (upper right) is shown as $50. But in the Set Wage pop-up, his wage is shown as $39!!! WTF???

I never see Sims autonomously spray roaches (they usually just stomp them, which is much more less effective), so I was very happy that Shelby did.

The problem with Christian’s work ethic was that the flower arranging station itself was glitched. Yulia sold it, got a new one, and Christian’s been dutifully producing snapdragons all day.

I would love to satisfy some of Shelby’s wants, but notice what 2 of them are:

She wants to fire BOTH Komei and Bruce! (Perhaps because they look so similar she can’t tell them apart?) Girlfriend’s gonna have to take a nap instead of using the Energizer….

Doesn’t this make you appreciate the display cases?:

The cases are refrigerated, which allow the mac and cheese inventory to stay in there indefinitely. But when Yulia set up a separate, expensively priced display, she used just a display table. That was a big mistake! She’s probably lost some customer stars that I didn’t notice.

If you’re running low on inventory, like Yulia is, another way to slow down demand is to distract the take-out customers by greeting them and showing them menus.

Re the Shelby/Christian interaction, I guess it’s nice to know the game recognizes the “Small Business Career.” (I never noticed such a reference before.)

The sneaky game is probably trying to get Yulia to fire Christian. She’s not going to fall for it, though.

Gosh, Komei makes some great faces, doesn’t he?

Since Marisa’s not a Manager, I had no idea she was close to maxing out her Cooking enthusiasm. But I’m delighted for her!

It will be fun hauling Yulia’s bacon out of the fire in the next installment….