Private conversations and autonomy off

I'm sure this has been brought up before but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with group conversations and I wish there was a social interaction option to have a private conversation with a sim. With group conversations my interaction que always gets rearranged, changed or deleted. Social doesn't improve and neither does the skill being worked on.

If I played with free will, I wouldn't mind so much but when I play more goal oriented with autonomy off and the game overrides my que and replaces my choices it makes me question if there's actually much of a difference with it off. I kind of understand if it adds an interaction based on your mood or traits but I'd prefer if that just boosted moodlets or fulfilled whims.

I've been playing the strangerville story and it seems to bother me more while working on that.