@tlobliviate As an experiment, have the sims quit their jobs (which they can do over the phone), bulldoze the two rabbitholes, use NRaas MasterController to remove their career outfits if necessary, then save, quit, and delete the five cache files in the Sims 3 user folder. For reference, they are:
- CASPartCache.package
- compositorCache.package
- scriptCache.package
- simCompositorCache.package
- socialCache.package
Reload your save, place one of the rabbitholes, and give a different sim a job there. (You don't have to save your progress; this is just for testing.) Let me know whether the sim is willing to go to work. If not, did you make any mod-related changes to this world to keep it in historical times? It's possible one of those changes is interfering.