Employee Identification

[BroodjeKoffie]

Is it possible to identify which employee is sitting at which desk? I am having trouble fulfilling their needs as I am not able to locate them easily when there are 4+ people in a single space. What I do now, is take them out of the schedule, so that one desk frees up - which is the one I need to equip with extras based on their demand. Any quicker way?

[Spaznetz]

Change their uniform to something that stands out. I have a preset one with a bright green apron, pink t-shirt, and bright green hat that I made just for this purpose.

When you spot them, you know where to put whatever they are asking for.

Put it on their desk and change their uniform back.

[nightshark]

Originally posted by Spaznetz:

Change their uniform to something that stands out. I have a preset one with a bright green apron, pink t-shirt, and bright green hat that I made just for this purpose.

When you spot them, you know where to put whatever they are asking for.

Put it on their desk and change their uniform back.

Rookie move... haha
Actually i just hover over the desk in the schedule menu. It tells you what is at the desks. Can be a pain but even with the weird outfit, you still have to find the right desk.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by BroodjeKoffie:

Is it possible to identify which employee is sitting at which desk? I am having trouble fulfilling their needs as I am not able to locate them easily when there are 4+ people in a single space. What I do now, is take them out of the schedule, so that one desk frees up - which is the one I need to equip with extras based on their demand. Any quicker way?

Hello! This will be fixed, but for now, using those tricks the other two mentioned should help!

[Sound Zero]

Go to your schedule, mouse over the computer workstation at the left of the employees seat. It will show what equipment is at their desk.

So, you add say a monitor, then go mouse over the desks to see which desk now has that monitor, you can either move the employee to that seat, or you can go move the monitor to a new desk until you get the right one.

For me, this is the fastest way to do this and works far better than changing uniforms or such. I usually just swap them with the desk that has what they want.

[BroodjeKoffie]

Thanks guys! But dressing up the demanding employee in a ridiculous outfit while they are at work seems like the most fitting and fun one XD

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by daygrindmike:

I have a couple companies with 50 employees in them and it's a pain trying to find the correct ones lol, but I honestly think it should be left like this. It gives incentive to buy plants, office phones, etc.

It doesn't give inventive to buy plants and such, why would it? This really needs to be changed. I have a building with a capacity of 50, and now I keep getting random demands for executive desks. I was future proofing, however, thankfully I only have a handful of employees so it's less of a pain to figure out who's at what desk. Simply allowing me to see their name when I hover over them would make life easier. If it stayed like this, as you suggest, the only incentive is to not have a full 50 standard desks, but to just wipe the office and install fewer executive desks right off that bat so you don't run out of space later. Had I known this prior, I would only have executive desks to save myself the tedious job of guessing which is the most optimal desk to replace and have to redo my layout to make it fit correctly.

In particular, it also makes the office installation irrelevant since it installs standard desks. The same number of executive desks simply will not fit on the floor space without looking ridiculous, if at all.

[Jeza]

Originally posted by daygrindmike:

I have a couple companies with 50 employees in them and it's a pain trying to find the correct ones lol, but I honestly think it should be left like this. It gives incentive to buy plants, office phones, etc. You can place a couple here and there on the desks, which reduce the amount of sifting because if you look to the left to see what's on each desk you can then be like, "Ok it's the one with the office phone" or "Ok it's the one with the plant 01", etc.

There is an issue with this, except for executive desks there are only 2 spots, take graphic design they need a graphic tablet by default that leaves 1 spot, most will ask for a mousepad that's the second spot used, now some of them ask for a third thing like a nicer seat, I have no way to add a plant to try and distinguish between all the desks.

It's also something that takes a lot of time and is not fun at all.

It's good that it's going to be solved and to encourage people to add more decorative items it would be just as effective to make them increase happiness or something.

[waltduo]

I agree, seeing their names would be a huge time-saver!!! Also, you have to remember to replace their items when the office is closed because if you take them off the schedule even for a few seconds to replace something, you have to redo all of their job functions like deliveries, etc. And...that is a huge, royal pain!!!

[Jeza]

Originally posted by waltduo:

I agree, seeing their names would be a huge time-saver!!! Also, you have to remember to replace their items when the office is closed because if you take them off the schedule even for a few seconds to replace something, you have to redo all of their job functions like deliveries, etc. And...that is a huge, royal pain!!!

1000% this, and even worse your purchasing agents lose the contracts they had and this can be devastating because the prices change daily so if you had a very good price with one of them that price is lost.
As an example I have 3 agents who can buy expensive jewelry and the 3 prices are 380 470 540 you can see there is a HUGE loss for me if I lose the contract with the cheapest price.

[Keith Darwin]

I always put a random selection of mouse pads, monitors, and chairs throughout an office. When someone demands something, I'll just shuffle around people to match their preferences. Even in a 50 person office this hasn't taken too much time.

Can't wait for the next patch and all those QoL updates!

[Jeza]

Originally posted by daygrindmike:

Originally posted by Jeza:

I had no idea this was even a thing!

I've noticed many people don't.
You can make a lot of pretty nice deals that way but it takes a lot of micromanaging that many people don't like, it also requires to buy pretty big quantities otherwise you might never reach the min price required for a delivery before your warehouse is empty.

Also you have to take into consideration the salaries you pay.
If a better price only saves you 1000 or so per day it's not worth it compared to the salary of a 100% purchasing agent specially of he required health insurance.

But in theory you could have one agent per product and one "loose" that you use every day to take a new contract and see the new prices.
Then if one has lowered you stop the contract from the agent assigned to that product and take a new one with the new prices.
Then you remove the contract from your "loose" agent so he can take a new one when you need to test the prices again.

In practice you can have great discounts by having around 3/4 agents per import company plus the loose one.
Focus on always having the lowest prices for the most expensive/ most bought articles and make do with what you have for the other ones.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Jeza:

it also requires to buy pretty big quantities otherwise you might never reach the min price required for a delivery before your warehouse is empty.

Also you have to take into consideration the salaries you pay.
If a better price only saves you 1000 or so per day it's not worth it compared to the salary of a 100% purchasing agent specially of he required health insurance.

But in theory you could have one agent per product and one "loose" that you use every day to take a new contract and see the new prices.
Then if one has lowered you stop the contract from the agent assigned to that product and take a new one with the new prices.
Then you remove the contract from your "loose" agent so he can take a new one when you need to test the prices again.

In practice you can have great discounts by having around 3/4 agents per import company plus the loose one.
Focus on always having the lowest prices for the most expensive/ most bought articles and make do with what you have for the other ones.

You don't necessarily need big quantities of one thing. Over time when you have enough businesses you can have enough orders of what you need to have it set on auto restock. I have mine set to keep minimum stock levels and all my purchasers are nearly able to place orders every day. You can mix and match slightly as well, so I shifted which purchaser buys paper bags so that stock level stays up because the other one purchased less often.

The other thing I do is have a set of purchasers for each warehouse. That way each warehouse has the ability to supply any product as I expand. I also had a loose agent that I could check on prices of expensive things. You can see this information from the import index on the market insider screen, but I don't remember each import index for all items at the time making the contract. So I had a spare agent that could make new contracts to check on prices. However, they ended up getting a sweet price on jewellery (cheap and expensive), but not on other things. So I didn't want to renew the other agents contract. So they're now my dedicated jewellery purchaser for my second warehouse.

Anyway, this is a little OT from the OP.