How many hours do you usually stay open? I personally find it frustrating that everytime I tell my sim to close the store, somebody decides to buy, then before I can even get them checked out, someone else is ready and before long I've got a line of customers waiting to be checked out. That's why my sim ends up spending all day and all night at the store because I can't get the customers to stop coming. lol
That's pretty messed up about the neat sims messing with your displays. I'd kick them out too.
Do you praise the employees or reprimand them? I was ignoring that in a previous game but in this one, I am really impressed with how quickly it raises their work ethic so they spend less time slacking and more time focused on their task. Having them answer questions brings multiple customers' desire to buy up pretty quickly for me. Don't know how it is for you.
The consumables going bad is the whole reason I didn't open the flower shop as I had originally planned. I read in the in-game description for floral arrangements that they lose freshness over time so figured that they would be more of a liability than an asset. As for the crafting club, that sounds interesting but won't really help with the wilting, will it? Of course when your sims gets proficient enough at making the arrangements, there is a fragrance that you can spray on it to keep it fresh for I longer, not sure how long though. I haven't sprayed them since I only use the arrangements to make a quick $6k per arrangement.