That's true; I was just wondering if there's a way to make them role objects, but I don't know squat about coding.

@Igazor, I tried snagging a sim who'd been assigned to a role through Register (I think?), gave him a self-employed career, set him as a waiter, and then reset him. I kinda figured that the game (or Register?) would hire a new sim for the role of Consignment Specialist, but it didn't. Now he leaves the Consignment Store for 7 hours every day to go be a waiter, and then comes back. I did this with a different role-sim, a maid, and he just stopped being a maid and became the chef. I checked both their stats, and everything is the same. I don't know why one kept his role and the other didn't. Any ideas?

A maid is a service sim, not a role sim, that's the difference. A service sim will drop their service if you make them do something else.

For the role sim, you need to remove them from their role by clicking the role object (the Consignment Register, in this case) and selecting "Remove: <sim name>". The role object will replace them as long as you still have "Allow Immigration" set to True in Register or "Allow Resident Assignment" set to True.

Even if this was not part of what you were doing by the way, another great way to ruin a Service Sim's assignment (like a maid) is to make them a resident. Unlike Role Sims, once you give them a house/household, they drop their Service assignment immediately.

So many players have wanted to "play" the maid (newspaper deliverer, babysitter, etc.) as part of the active household but such is impossible -- they become "regular" sims once you get them to move in anywhere.

Ah, thanks @Sarah_Sims and @igazor! I wound up just taking another maid and making him a waiter instead of the consignment specialist. Of course, now my active family is rolling in maids. They currently have three. I have no idea what's going on.

I've had two maids show up at my actives' house at the appointed time before (but not three), and without doing anything to provoke it. Never quite sure if the town's service thinks my sims are particularly messy or if it's a glitch, but it usually sorts itself out by the next day. Maybe once I had to call to cancel the service and then establish it over again.

I cancelled and reestablished. Then more maids showed up. So I dismissed one, and he got replaced, and then I fired one, and he got replaced, too, and it's kind of like in Buffy when she briefly died the first time and Kendra was called up and she was revived, and when Kendra died, Faith was called up even though Buffy was still alive. Although having an abundance of slayers in my game would be more interesting than too many maids.

LOL, sorry trying to be serious here. Dismissing and firing aren't the same as canceling the service. How about canceling and running for a sim day without maids at all. And then re-establishing the service?

If it turns out the service cannot be canceled, I would probably retreat to Edit Town, evict the household to the side of the screen, copy their residential lot down to the bin, bulldoze the original, replace it with a copy, and move the household back in to see if that resets the service status properly.

Oh, I meant that first I cancelled for a day, and when I reestablished, two maids showed up. So my sim dismissed one, and another showed. So she fired him, and then another one showed. In the meantime, the first maid was there, doing all the work, so the other maids were unnecessary. I mean, it's not like my sims are slobs.

Doesn't the game send two maids as standard if the lot is over a certain size?

@tamalinn: How big is the lot you're hiring the maids for?