Hiring Workers

Learn how to hire and manage workers in Supermarket Simulator. Discover their capabilities, limitations, and tips for efficient use of this autopilot feature.

You don't have to do all the tedious farm stuff all by yourself in this game, you can hire paid workers to do the work for you! Hiring a worker is basically an autopilot. It will come in handy especially on large fields. You can activate this feature with the 'H' key. It sounds awesome, but there are some important limitations. First of all, workers can only do some types of jobs, not everything, and can only work on fields! They can't transport stuff from A to B, so you can send them to sell grain or get purchased stuff, sadly. They can only work on fields, use plows, cultivators, seeders and harvesters, nothing else, but this should be enough to get most of the workload off of you.

To activate this feature, hop into your tractor and hook any of the mentioned implements or get into your combine and attach a header suitable for the job (maize or other crops). Drive out to the field you need the work done on, and position your tractor or combine to the edge of the field as you would do when doing the work by yourself. Make absolutely sure the vehicle is lined up as parallel to the edge of the field as possible. Now, lower/turn on the implement or the header and press the 'H' key. The auto pilot will take it from there. You can't control the vehicle while the worker is working, but you can watch nevertheless. You can also leave the vehicle or switch to a different one, the worker will do his job on his own. He will drive in a straight line and work whatever implement is hooked up. When at the end of the field, he will lift the implement, turn around, lower it, and do the next row automatically, then the next, until he is finished with the field, then he simply goes home. You can also dismiss the worker whenever you like by pressing 'H' again. He is paid continuously while he is working, which is deducted from your account, just like the seeder.

Now, this sounds awesome in theory, but sadly, the worker is pretty under-educated, and does his job with a considerable margin of error. When you don't line up your vehicle perfectly, he will deviate from the edge and leave a wedge shaped strip of unworked land there. You can correct this by starting the worker and staying on the vehicle. When you see him deviating from the edge, just dismiss him, turn a little and hire him again. Do it until he is going in the direction you want him to, he should do the rest of the rows fine from then on. A good method is to do the first row yourself, and only hire the worker to do the rest of the field.

He also tends to randomly turn in the wrong direction when he reaches the end of the field and start working an already worked row (or outside the field), then he realizes that row is already done and just stops. Sadly, you can't do much about this, just check on the worker regularly and if you notice he is turning in the wrong direction, stop him, line up your vehicle on the row and start him again. It's a little tedious, but still better than doing it yourself.

You also have to watch out for obstacles around the field. The worker needs room to turn around at the edge of the field, and if there are obstacles in the way, like stones, trees, other vehicles, he may run into them and hang there doing nothing. There is a rescue script in place, so when he is obstructed by something, he will back up and try to find another way, but that does not work every time, so try to use the worker on fields clear of trees and obstacles at the edges or do those parts yourself and hire the worker afterwards.

There is a little trick to avoid the obstacle-hang, it works with tractors and combines too: Work the first row on the edges of the field yourself, like a box. Like when you need a field cultivated, hop in a tractor and cultivate the edges of the field, you can do two rows to be sure. This creates a nice little safety margin around the field that needs working. This way the worker won't drive off the field at all, thus avoiding any obstacles on the edges and he is much less likely to turn in the wrong direction!

Aside from the little malfunctions, the worker seems to do his job alright most of the time. He is pretty disastrous with the plow, but he is good with the planter and quite proficient with the harvester. In the case of the harvester, the worker is intelligent enough to stop when it starts raining or snowing and continue the work when the weather clears up. He also extends the crop duct when the harvester is almost full to signal you, so you can go and collect the load. When the combine gets 100% full, he will stop and wait for you to unload the grain to a tipper, so he can continue to work. When the worker is on brake (ie. not working for whatever reason) he is not paid, so don't worry about paying overtime.

The worker is a good way to multitask right at the beginning of the game. For example, when he is harvesting your field, you can start to cultivate or plant another one, or transport some grain to the port.