I got a weird bug happening where the janitors on Downtown lots continually throw trash on the floor. They collect the trash, walk over to the trash can, and then just dump it on the floor next to it. They will do this over and over, picking up the floor trash piles they themselves have created and attempting to dispose of them, but they never actually get the trash in the bin! Then the roaches and flies start to come...

It's not happening in any other neighborhoods, just Downtown. And I'm not using custom trash cans or anything, just the Maxis ones. The trash cans are placed normally around the lots and should be perfectly usable. AFAIK I don't have any trash-related or janitor-related mods.

Any ideas about what might be causing this strange behavior?

Something that is interfering with and breaking the SimAntics code on the trashcan, the use of it, most likely. I suspect it will be one of the mods you've installed for an object placed in those Downtown lots -- even if it is not janitor and trashcan related. It must be interfering with the trashcan object in some way (whether it was cloned from it, or whether it is breaking the SimAntics programming on the trashcan somehow).

That's all I got.

What you could try to do is extract the Downtown trashcan from the game FARs, and then place it in the GameData/UserObjects folder. See if that overrides the mod that is causing the trouble.

As far as I know, UserObjects takes precedence over the Downloads folder. And any IFF file placed outside a FAR will override the one in the FAR archive.

I'll need to have a think about what I'm using on Downtown lots but not anywhere else. Hmm I wonder if it's the replacement Downtown phonebooths I'm using? They're from a reputable site but who knows... I'll do some testing.

If I can't figure it out I'll try extracting the trash can, I suppose. Thank you!

If I can't find the cause, I usually go by a process of elimination: remove (move out) all the Downtown mods, then see if the game behaves normal. Then add some back a small bunch at a time -- keeping track of which mods you're adding. When it breaks, you know which small bunch contains the buggy item -- and then you can find the item using the same process of elimination on them, narrowing down on the suspect. 😉

Before you do anything, though, remember to backup your whole game directory -- in the event that anything should go wrong, so you can restore things to the way they were.