OK I was able to reproduce the bug (I'd call it more an oversight). I had just gifted Tinker the commander's hat. I found the commander's hat via drone exploration. I have NOT seen Emee yet. Tinker said all she had was the hat (she didn't mention the two outfits she already had...), then the MC said this:
"I think Emee was selling something else, too. I can make that, if you want."
I guess the implication is the player will have found the commander's hat after unlocking Anna and Emee. I found the commander's hat before meeting Emee, making this a little confusing!
I'm hoping that with starting over the RNG gods will be nicer to me in regards to Petal, there was too many times I had to call Petal back with "nothing" because she'd run into a tree, the brambles, fought with a squirrel, tried to swim...and no "found credits" - I think it was 4 or 5 straight times I had to do that and I was thinking "either I'm just really unlucky or the auto drone was made more challenging" - sounds like it's the former.