#as you can see it was another busy one at Van Liddelton Groceries

[victorluvsalice]

-->Anyway – back to Retail Time! And to the infamous lag on this lot, unfortunately. :( Based on what I saw today, it seems to be primarily tied to Sims actually BUYING stuff, as it seems to happen most often when people are waiting to be rung up or right after they’ve been rung up and they still need to grab their item. Maybe it's because I have a lot of mod-added items for sale? *shrug* Fortunately it wasn’t too bad today, with only a few significant instances, but still – meh.

Despite the game doing its best to stop them, though, the trio persevered, chatting with various customers and doing their best to get them to buy stuff – and succeeding pretty admirably! Victor talked a guy named Patrick into buying a block of beeswax for $18, then immediately rang up visiting teenager Ren for the same thing, while Smiler helped a kid named Wren buy a small $5 lettuce and some dude named Aarush grabbed an avocado from the veggie stands for $25. Alice, meanwhile, was working over an elder named Samuel – but as he found her unattractive (as per Wonderful Whims), I don’t think her attempts to get him to buy stuff worked very well. :p She thus went to ring up Agnes Crumplebottom for a $68 bag of fresh bread instead – fortunately distracting the woman from noticing Smiler lay a cute cheek kiss on Victor. XD Smiler then headed to the center aisle and let off a happy blast to try and improve everyone’s moods –

-->And at this point, everything started getting a little chaotic, as a bunch of people suddenly wanted to be rung up at once! Alice took care of a lady named Giovanna despite the lag’s best efforts, ringing her up for a $70 jar of honey, while Smiler discovered Alice had been more successful at convincing Samuel to buy than she’d realized and rung him up for a box of blackberry jam for $455. They also went around and rung up a kid named Taka for a box of vegetarian MREs for $482 (must be buying them for his parents). Victor, however, was the real winner of the selling spree, managing to sell a Happy Scent perfume to a “loiterer” named Joey (who REALLY had to go to the bathroom) for a cool $1,174! Maybe I should keep that in mind when I think about the future of the store...

-->With that taken care of (and a lady named Fetia snagging herself a $5 Cereberry in the background), Victor went ahead and did some more Scruberooing of shelves and fridges while Smiler and Alice kept attending customers – Smiler ringing up the kid Pierce for a $206 box of canned green beans, and Alice (after an ANNOYINGLY long wait) teen Sofia for a $517 box of strawberry jam. Alice then headed into the break room to make some hamburger sliders, as she was feeling hungry, and I noticed that Victor kind of needed to pee and sent him into the bathroom –

Only for another wave of “hey I would like to buy things” to hit the store! I quickly had Alice stop her sliders (though she DID insist on taking the cutting board all the way down the stairs...then all the way back up again -.-) and Victor stop his attempt to use the toilet and sent them out to help Smiler on the selling floor. Between the three of them, they managed to get Javier a $44 jar of mayonnaise; Liberty Lee an $86 butterscotch cupcake; the returning Ren a $734 chocolate pie; and Makoa a $29 jar of mushroom conserve. Oh, and Aarush came back and bought a plasma fruit for $10. XD Talk about a last-minute rush!

-->And it was indeed the last-minute rush, because I looked over at the retail UI, realized the shop had been open nine hours, and decided it was probably time to close up. So, after an aborted attempt to get Smiler to befriend a customer so she would let them have her plasma (they now know that Kasandra likes the color green), I had them shut up the shop while Alice went and finished her sliders and Victor finally got his bathroom break. By the time they closed at 6:30 PM in-game, they’d made a nice profit of $4,174 on everything they’d sold! :) Yeah, I know Alice and Smiler can make more than that just in royalties on their books and videos, but it’s still pretty good considering I have everything on "sale" prices. Anyway, Alice called everyone down to the basement to eat, and she and Victor enjoyed some sliders while Smiler had a plasma fruit and bred some frogs to create an additional plasma pack to drink. Alice then went to clean up her plate –

And for some reason headed upstairs to do so. Following her, I realized that what she was doing was clearing some rotten raw meat out of the “butcher” display – and that a lot of the remaining meat was ALSO going rotten as she did so. D: Cue me trying to coordinate her and Victor’s efforts to clean up all the spoiled food from both the meat display and the fridges (which lead to a lot of "placing a pile of dirty dishes on the nearest consignment shelf," annoyingly) while Smiler went around and removed a bunch of the “out of stock” signs from the shelves. Eventually, though, everything was cleaned up, with Victor and Smiler finishing things off while Alice caught a few winks on the break room couch (her werewolf instincts were demanding a nap) –

[victorluvsalice]

Of course, I couldn’t have them spend TOO much time in the sauna (dangerous, you know), so once everyone had some happy moodlets from the steam, Victor got sent to use the facilities while Alice and Smiler went outside --

To show off some new outfits! Yeah, I recently did a little restructuring of some of the gang’s clothing, including some new everyday outfits for Alice and Smiler. Alice’s shirt here is one of the unlocked tops you get by progressing through the Artist career -- I thought the paint-splattered tank-top looked good on her -- while Smiler’s shirt is from Saurus’s Rainbow Collection, a collection of clothes that includes a good number of pride-flag-themed items! (Thank you to @hellafluff for eir post about eir Sim version of eir Malkavian Brody for having a link to that!) Smiler’s naturally wearing the nonbinary flag shirt, which I think looks really good on them. :) Certainly doesn’t hurt that the nonbinary flag is also the colors of The Smiler coaster! :D

Anyway, while Victor was busy getting cleaned up (because I also always forget he has Scruberoo), Smiler and Alice headed over to the nearby little park area to do some exploring -- Smiler dug up a dirt pile that yielded a time capsule, which in turn yielded a Chaz McFreely MySim, while Alice dug up a fossil of a sea monster and chased some pigeons around. XD Really yielding to the werewolf instincts there! I was just sending the freshly-showered Victor out to join them --

When I saw the notice in the corner of the screen about the Finchwick Fair starting up! Now, I hadn’t been to one of those yet, so I decided to see what kind of fair it was and clicked the “more information” button.

OVERSIZED CROPS! That’s one Victor could actually participate in! So, after an EXTREMELY quick visit to Van Liddelton Groceries for Victor to get his biggest oversized crop (a giant watermelon) and for me to check if Copypasto works on the mod-added bulk-processed food from Simsco Canning (it does not, sadly), it was over to Finchwick to enter into the fair and start the second half of their adventures: Victor’s Quest To Win The Finchwick Fair! Victor dropped off his watermelon on the “oversized crops” side of the fair, then headed into the pub to use the free kitchen there to make a fruit pie for the “pie” side -- though he insisted on mixing up his pie dough on the counter directly behind the bar. O.o I mean, I guess if you want to stay close to your partners. . . Alice and Smiler, naturally, hit the bar itself for some drinks -- though I learned pretty rapidly that having them order their “favorite drinks” is not a good idea. To whit, Smiler ordered a Wrench, when the only drink I KNOW they can have safely is the Plasma Jane (because, you know, VAMPIRE), and Alice ordered a Minty Fresh PET drink. Which I made her drink because I wasn’t ENTIRELY sure what the drink’s deal was, only for her to get an uncomfortable moodlet. Maybe she got it because she’s a werewolf? Either way, not great choices, you two! Honestly, you should just be able to ASSIGN your Sim’s favorite drink. . .

Oh, and yes, you may notice we have a visitor from another game here. XD Specifically, one of the NPCs Isis Payton decided to wear one of the variants of the vault suit I downloaded from @plazasims a while back -- looks like she’s from Vault 81, nice. XD Hope you’re enjoying life above ground! XD