What is up with Vendors and shops being empty?

[ewbimfree]

How do you keep vendors happy? They are the only staff who give me trouble. How many vendors should you have? If you place 1 shop, it comes with a vendor, but do you need to hire another to cover breaks? If so, is it per shop or should an extra vendor cover a few shops? I've managed to figure out a lot of this game on my own but vendors have me stumped.

[unca.alby]

You only need another vendor to cover breaks if your scenario has provision for that. You'll know because you'll build a "Staff Room" and it doesn't say anything about it. If there is no provision for it, the game will let you build the Staff Room, but will warn you that none of your employees will use it.

Without the Staff Room, it's basically just one vendor per shop. You have to monitor their thoughts and their happiness level. Three things will make your employees unhappy: too little money, too little work, and too much work. Their thoughts generally reveal which issue they're most concerned about at the time.

Not enough money, give them a mild raise. I prefer to train them up first, because I think a better trained employee is worth the extra money, no matter what the employee might think. This isn't a hard and fast rule, as some scenarios were especially tweaked to be more challenging by having the employees want more money than normal.

If there's not enough work, consider reassigning to a busier area. Or just hang tight, business goes in waves and spells. Things might not be busy right this second, but five minutes later nobody can keep up suddenly. If there's too much work, same advice, plus, you can add more employees to the area (build another shop in the same locale), or pay for extra training. A better trained employee will be able to work harder, and in general, be happier. Again, some scenarios tweak this to make it more challenging, and you'll need to move heaven and earth to make your employees happy.

Now if your scenario lets you build usable staff rooms, then just make a guess as to what percentage extra employees you need. I'd guess 10 or 20% extra should do. They'll automatically rotate in and out of the staff room to rest up from a long, hard work-day. Remember too, this isn't just for Vendors. Your hard-working Security Guards, Janitors, and Mechanics will also use them to take breaks.

Make sure you have enough and they aren't too far away from the work-sites. You can also pay a little extra to "expand" the insides of a staff room, so without taking a millimeter more space, it can handle several more employees. It's like a Tardis! The game will warn you if some employees can't find space in a staff room, so either build another or expand the existing ones.

Also look into paying extra for Employee Perks, like the social club, or the training area. Different perks have different positive effects on your resting employees. (Only one perk to a Staff Room, unfortunately.)

Your employees appreciate it when you take as much care decorating the Staff Room as you do decorating the rides and queues. It makes them happier. Try to keep it in the same theme as the rest of the park, and your guests who walk past will enjoy it too.

[Pugmalley]

I usually just disable staff room features and pay all vendors 300 and they never leave then. Too much hassle otherwise to me.

[AgentRuby]

Originally posted by ewbimfree:

How do you keep vendors happy? They are the only staff who give me trouble. How many vendors should you have? If you place 1 shop, it comes with a vendor, but do you need to hire another to cover breaks? If so, is it per shop or should an extra vendor cover a few shops? I've managed to figure out a lot of this game on my own but vendors have me stumped.

What everyone else said with this added thing.

Sometimes it's just better to let them go. If shops are empty, decide whether they are in the right location and if not, either close them or if you can, move them. But if you close them you don't have to pay the fees of the shop so sometimes this helps when extra money is needed.

Also, make some work rosters. If you can, keep the shops closer together where there is a lot of traffic. Make sure they have a staff room relatively close by and use some perk that increases happiness.

Personally I don't train my vendor staff past level 2 unless I can be sure that the profit will outdo the expense and if they want to leave I just let them go because really it's all about location strategy of the shops for where there will be a lot of guests and if the shops are busy or are the vendors just standing around.

[grampers62]

Is this happening in one specific career scenario?
There is one where the staff are set to very difficult.
When a Staff room is available I usually plan on four vendors for three shops as a start.

[Banjotails]

Shop staff suck balls. Dont bother at all with rosters or trying to keep them to one shop or area. They wont follow anything you set up and will walk to the nearest shop free, no matter where in the park it is. My advice is build your shops and staff room near by to cut down on walking distance and shops left free and hire one to two more staff then shops so one will fill when one leaves.

[unca.alby]

One thing to be cautious of ... if you simply CLOSE a shop ... not move it or destroy it ... the vendor who came with it now has nothing to do ... but is still on the payroll. So they'll just wander all around your park like a guest, except they won't ride anything or buy anything.

You either need to set their salary to Zero ... and they'll eventually get mad, go on strike, then quit ... or just fire them and be done with it.

I don't know if there's any difference or consequences in either strategy, but I do remember the Oak Island career scenario, where the fellow who has his Walk-Through of all the Career Scenarios said to set their salaries to Zero. I never understood why not just fire them, but I did follow his advice and did beat the Scenario. You do it right, you eventually get your income back on track, then you can start hiring and opening shops again.

I also remember in the Miss Elly's Diner Scenario. I cut the entertainer's salary in half until I started getting a steady income. Then, just before she was ready to quit, I put her salary back to normal ... plus a little extra for the trouble. (I am just so nice to my little imaginary friends!)

But I still don't know what was up with not firing them.