Just got Ambitions! Created a stylist sim, but her work time says 9am to 7 pm. Does she really have to work all those hours? What about lunch breaks? Would someone explain how the stylist career works, I am so lost, lol. :P

You don't have to work all those hours, you can eat, go home take a shower etc but you earn the most money if you take styling jobs. Click on the Career Tab and then Click on Go to Work, it will either take you to the Salon or another Sim's house who requested your services .

I actually redid the second floor of the salon with a small kitchen and a private bathroom with a shower so my sim can grab something to eat and take a shower if need be and not miss any potential customers who walk into the salon when she doesn't have contracted work.

Yeah, s10herself, I did that too And a drafting table too so she can work on fashion designs between walk-ins.

When you start off, you only get like one client per day anyway.

Even with 3 jobs a day I ussually found myself being done around 14.00-16:00h. Sometimes later if my sim was feeling pekkish and I had her stop for lunch between jobs.
Heck, the day she got to lvl 10 in the career she slept in until 14:00 since she'd been up until pretty late the day before

You can advance faster in your career if you offer makeovers to sims around town. It's under the Fashion button (when you click on townies) but I think you only get the option after level 3 or 4.

Or you can offer them to any Sim who is in the salon by clicking the makeover station, offer makeover to...
I've had back luck with my first couple of days though, out of four two didn't like them and one got mangled and came out gross, only one was moderately happy with it. Even though I gave my stylist the observant trait and got to know the clients a little bit, he still couldn't discover their favourite colours, if those make any difference. Oh well, practice practice!

My stylist just started her career and seems to spend an awful lot of time just standing around. So far she has become best friends with Dustin Langerak and Narcissa Vatos, since they work at the salon. The clients seem to come in waves. There will be a few hours of nothing and then three or four sims come in for makeovers.

I'm going to have to spend some more time with this career, since I don't think I've really gotten the hang of it yet.

How did you get the stove in a community lot?

But as other have noted, there is not penalty for arriving to work late or leaving early. At lower levels, you can do your one job and leave. If you want additional experience, you can offer make overs to other sims who enter the shop or you encounter. But if the shop is empty, there is no reason to stick around.

I just have a fridge, bar and coffee maker so they can have soup and whatnot.