Butler

The Butler is an NPC who appears in The Sims: Superstar and The Sims 2: Apartment Life. Sims can hire him by using the telephone. He is similar to the maid but has the potential to replace all basic services.

He does various chores such as:
 * cleaning the house.
 * watering plants.
 * making beds.
 * activating Servo.
 * serving food.
 * caring for babies.
 * fending off obsessed fans.
 * feeding and cleaning up after pets.

The Sims
The Butler is introduced in The Sims: Superstar. His name is Alfred, and he charges 500 Simoleons for one day. His dress consists of a black tuxedo, gray pants and white gloves. He has gray hair, light skin, and appears to be elderly.

He will activate Servo as needed, but will ignore Bonehilda's closet. If Servo is not present, he will call the repairman as needed. He may also call the maid and the gardener, though he will also do cleaning and gardening himself. He will feed the fish in the Poseidon's Adventure Aquarium. He will fill pet food bowls, though he wil not recognize custom bowls.

The following interactions are available:
 * Dismiss
 * Fire
 * Ask.../Dismiss Visitors (when there are guests in the house)
 * Ask.../Prepare Meal

Issues

 * After Superstar was released, there were many reports of the game lagging severely while Alfred was tending plants. This doesn't always happen, but players with older computers should be aware of it.
 * He cannot be told to prepare a meal unless there is a Maxis refrigerator or grill on the lot. He will not recognize the Tuscan fridge (La Frigorifero by Belconi) from Makin' Magic.

Trivia

 * Alfred may be taken from the DC comics character Alfred Pennyworth, who is Batman's butler.
 * In The Sims, if there is a bar in the house, Alfred may be seen taking a swig from it when he has nothing else to do.

The Sims 2
The butler is back, and the peasants rejoice! You can hire a butler to do all those nasty chores you don't want to do yourself. That description alone makes him sound no more interesting than the maid, but the butler is so much more than that. First of all, he walks over at around 7am and stays until 8pm even if there is nothing for him to do. This way, he'll immediately respond to any little dirty dish or moldy bathtub that pops up.

The butler is more than just a super-maid. He replaces the gardener and repairman as well, so Sims won't have to worry about that. In fact, when initially hired, the butler blatantly says that he's better than them and asks the player's permission to just fire them all and be done with it.

Work that a butler can do includes washing dishes, making beds, and scrubbing toilets, bathtubs, and showers. He will also take out the trash, and clean the fishtanks. The butler also does the gardening. He will pluck the weeds, water the plants, and trim the hedges. This is quite useful if a garden requires daily attention, since the normal gardener turns up once every three days. His last job is repairing. He will be able to repair any items, from a clogged-up toilet, to a broken plasma TV.

However, he cannot exterminate bugs. He will not be able to stomp on the roaches either. Any other jobs that he can't do, he'll outsource them to private contractors. Be a little wary of this, as you may randomly see a pop-up from the grocery delivery man asking how much food you want when your family Sim, clearly, is nowhere near a phone. This is just the butler going the extra mile to make sure the house is fully stocked. The butler has a couple of other perks as well. He'll cook light meals, but he'll do so intelligently: he only does it if the Sims on the lot are all hungry and there's no edible food served anywhere. Spoiled food with green whiff clouds and flies isn't going to be accepted as food.

He can be given one of three door policies; he can either greet all visitors so they immediately make themselves at home, deny all visitors so your family maintains privacy, or not answer the door at all and leave the decision to you. Changing his door policy is an immediate command, so your Sim won't have to walk all the way over to him to give him his orders.

All this comes at a price, as he is far more expensive than the maid, gardener, and repairman combined. A new family with a small house is practically wasting cash on him, but rich families with large houses or busy houses will greatly benefit from his presence.

Some butlers are very annoying; they have an obsession with food even when everyone is sleeping and well-fed. If you make him selectable, and cross it out, he will cry.

If there are babies or toddlers in the house, he will feed them, change their diapers, and let them out of their cribs. If their parents are working, he can be left alone with children, so there is no need to call a nanny either. He will also clean up bottles. If there are babies or children in the house, and they need taking care of, he tends to neglect his duties to care for them.

When fired, a message in the screen pops up with an endearing farewell.