For the first time, I allowed my sims to hire a butler. As far as I know the butler will do the Maid and the Nanny's work. But my butler just stood by the door and when clicking on him I could only decide on who to let into the house.
How do I make him cook/clean/watch the baby?

He does that automatically. And personally, i think he doesn't do a great job.

So I should just wait?

If he doesn't do anything by the end of his shift, you may be having an issue with your game. Try playing that specific lot with no CC and see if the butler does his job (of course you don't have to save).

Fire him,

Mine cannot take care of the babies at all, my poor little twins were starving when the parents were at work. Fortunately I didn't save the game. Besides all my flowers in the lot were death because he did not water them. All he does is cooking.

I must be lucky, I've haven't had any real issues with my butlers yet. I was annoyed when he decided to take care of the baby and then left him on the floor to go cook lunch, but then as soon as he was done serving the food he went back to the nursery and put the baby back in his crib. I was amazed.

He's been taking care of the gardening, cleaning the house, and fixing everything that's broken. My only real complaint is that he cooks WAY too much food - I've never had the fridge run out so quickly. >_< At least my sims will never starve.

I hired butler for my vampire family. He kept peeking in the coffins. Then once he peeked and had heart attack and grim reaper cam it was funny to bad i was to shocked to make screenies.

My butler cooks too much. whenever they have nothing else to do they cook. I end up not paying attention to the inevitably spoiling food(because he takes his time cleaning it up), and here come the neighbors to complain about the smell

There is the "Butler No More Cooking" mod by Squinge at Insim to eliminate that annoyance.

Thanks for the info roses, but I try to avoid hacks and mods as much as possible

You know, cooking is the last problem I have when I hired one. I swear he spent every waking minute outside, except when the children needed something - he live for those kids and the gardens!

I get frustrated because I can't click on him to request to do something - I know he does it autonomously, but I wish I could break his chain and say "hey, could you fix breakfast now so it'll be ready right when the family has woken up and bathed?" or "Dude, come inside, we need a meal for the headmaster, pronto!!" Tara DeBateau started a fire... twice and he was watering the flowers for the 5th time that day :eye:twitch:

He works alright for me. I have a perfect plant mod (I like building big gardens and usually I place plants where sims can't get them), so he doesn't do any gardening. I've only ever seen him rake. At most he'll cook 3 meals a day, but he usually only makes breakfast. Most of the time he's cleaning and taking care of the tots.

I am gonna guess that like the nanny, it's a give or take thing. I've read people had horrible and wonderful things with nannies, and this is actually making me think the same thing with Butlers.

My butler isn't bad at all, he does his work and the just does idle things like sit down, or sometimes pick stuff off of his clothes like most sims do when idle. However, I will comment I have had one frisky butler who tried to make moves on the mother while she was pregnent and tried to goose her and serenade. I fired him at day 2 when he tried to goose again and a different and better butler had arrived when I called back a few days later.

Yes, I had problems with the butler and the other people I hired in the house. My game is full of mods and hacks. Had a cleanup and found a mod to make sure he did the job. It worked like clockwork afterwords. Where did I get that mod.

I never hired a butler before,
but I'm glad that he's better then the granny.

I have a butler for my really rich family, the Luxe's and he is sort of good... he keeps up the gardening and the housework pretty well - but I can't expect him to be always on top of that since it's a family of four plus pets - but the food thing is kind of annoying, mostly because so far all he ever makes is TV dinners!

LOL If I'm hiring a butler, he better be making me lobster!!

Sometimes you just get a bad one. Fire him and go to the phone to hire a new one. It's the same with nannies lol.

Good to know! LOL I will see if that helps...

One of my favourite families has an awesome butler. Everything worked the way it was supposed to be. I didn't even mind the cooking. I put the leftovers away if no one eats it. However, one day he glitched. He came to the lot and just stood by the mailbox. He wasn't frozen, he just wasn't doing anything. It was horrifying because there was no one else around to take care of the baby as everyone had gone to work. The baby sat in stinky diapers and was crying for 5 sims hours. I used move_objects to move him into the nursery hoping that he'd do something but he just stood there doing his ambient animations.

Finally, when one of my Sim adults got home, I had him dismissed right away (I didn't fire him though). The butler left as usual. When he came back the next day, everything was cool again.

That's my exciting butler drama.

Usually my butlers are great at helping my families but every once in a while they just stand around doing nothing (with there still being stuff to clean, babies to feed, etc) so I make a sim tip them (any amount) and then they get back to work right away. It works for me!

I must have been on zone out mode but yesterday was the first time I saw 'hire butler' on the list (is it always an option??)

I had him cook for the headmaster. The kids got into private school.

My butler never cooked -- except once or twice that he prepared breakfast for the kids. I have left my Sims starving to check whether that would ring any bells to him, but.. NO. He would let them die if it was for him to decide. That's why he was smitten to death. Let's see how the next one is going to treat my family...

I only have a buttler in the Goth house. He works alright, but because of two adults, one teen and one toddler, he can't really keep up with their general messiness. I'm not sure has he ever made a meal, he might have but usually he just works around the house. Only once he decided not to do anything - just standing around facing a wall, so I had one of the adults influence him to clean, it worked and the next day he was ok again.

The one butler i hired was really good, did the garden, inc the vege garden, and took care of the pets. Only he was so slow with breakfast that everyone was at school/work by the time he had it on the table.

Are all the butlers men?