my sims suddenly can’t cook

My sim suddenly can’t cook properly. After taking ingredients out of the fridge, they get the “can’t reach” routing error and refuse to use the counters they normally prep food on.

What’s strange is that they will only continue the cooking process if they go to one specific counter elsewhere in the house. However, if I place items on that specific counter, they still won’t start cooking from there. That room is not a kitchen, so I don’t want them constantly running there, and I also don’t want to move that counter into the kitchen because it’s a different style.

For reference: the counters in my kitchen are S. Cargeaux Counter, the one specific counter they keep trying to use is The Harbinger Counter

I’m not sure yet whether this is caused by mods or CC. I still need to check, but I haven’t installed any new mods recently, and there was a noticeable gap between my last mod installation and when this issue started happening.

Update:
I’ve discovered that my sims will use any counter of any style as long as it is NOT placed in the kitchen. The moment the same counter is placed back into the kitchen, they refuse to use it for cooking.
Appliances placed on counters — such as microwaves, tea makers, etc. — continue to function normally even when the counters are in the kitchen.

Update 2:
I remembered that I had previously changed item placement on the kitchen counters, so I reverted them back to how they were before.
For clarity, I’ll refer to the counters as follows:
 Counter A: a counter that still has 1–2 items on it
 Counter B: a completely empty counter
After reverting the item placement, my sims are now able to cook in the kitchen again. However, they will only use Counter A. Counter B is still not usable for food prep.
I tested this by having two sims cook together. The sim standing in front of Counter B used to  participate in the cooking before this issue occured, but now the sim B only stand idle and do nothing.