I've seen cases where the employer thinks it is work ethic, employees are truly just terrified and afraid. No one wants to be the first one to look like they are slacking off.

Upper management has to take the steps themselves, telling people "I only will respond to a fire or equivalent call after hours", leaving on time and not coming in extra early. That sends a message more thoroughly than anything you could say.

Even if you decide to quietly check your email after hours, never send one after hours.

Make your actions speak for you, it's the only way to truly convince others.

That's being taken care of for us by upper management laying off large percentages of technical workers in a manner designed to destroy morale.

Management has already lost several truly key people to their attitudes. They just instructed those who were still around to pick up the slack.

We did it the opposite direction, the starting hour has moved back to 07:00 or earlier for some. Then around 17:00-18:00 you take an hour or two off for dinner, and if anything is remotely important, are often expected to work at least one more hour.

The problem isn't that vacation days are scheduled "on paper", but that people don't actually take those vacations, or don't feel like they are allowed to take them for real.

Companies schedule vacation days now because it's carried as a fiscal impact on their statements. I'm waiting for companies to explicitly require "vacation" to be scheduled evenly throughout the year. Have ten days vacation? Must take 3 days by April 30, 5 days by June 30, etc. Of course this would be combined with being expected to continue to respond to emails during those scheduled days off.

Similar situation here, though maybe not so obvious.

Officially, we are ordered to take all scheduled vacation days, required to schedule them early in the year.

In reality, we are expected to attend meetings, check email, and do work while on vacation, despite official policy prohibiting such. Anyone who doesn't work at least five to ten hours of overtime per week is "not being a team player" and "not understanding the significance of the priority of the project." Supervising managers are expected to frequently work twelve hour days or more, and a vacation day means that they might only work eight hours that day, attending meetings, responding to email, etc.

The Icelandic sagas are a few hundred years older and contain all the elements of a fantasy I would expect to see. Many of them were written after the Christianization of Iceland.

Close by? Don't you mean "within a hundred yards and not sheltered by sound proofing?"

In fairness to the slightly cheaper instruments (e.g. at the $1200 price point instead of the $3000 price point), sometimes, the luthiers get lucky and hit a good combination to make a cheaper instrument sound like a much higher quality one. I've seen this recently on a viola I purchased for my child. The $1200 instrument was clearly outperforming the higher priced instrument.

However, any instrument needs to be carefully adjusted to get the best tonal quality out of it. That $1200 viola? It had the strings replaced with a different set better for that instrument, the sound post was adjusted, and a few other things done to clean up a less than stellar tonal quality on the upper half of the A and D strings. The C and G strings were excellent. (The sudden change in tonal quality is what told me to suggest a sound post adjustment, it was starting surprisingly close to harmonic points and consistent through the rest of the fingerboard, not just a single wolf note). Using a bow that works well with the instrument also makes a big difference.

And speakers so loud that I can't even sit there through the previews without a massive headache? Sometimes the staff will turn it down, half the time they say they will and actually don't. Theaters seem to prefer volumes set for people who need hearing aids and don't want to use them.

I'm told that a very small number of diet sources actually have resources for people who need to gain weight. Real dietitians are used to weight gain diets. The challenge I gave the dietitian was for me to gain weight and not disturb my wife's diet as she was losing weight. (The answer was an attempt to get me to toss in more nuts on my salad and switch me to home made vinegar and oil salad dressing.) I didn't gain, but I stopped losing, which was held to be a partial victory.

It makes an amusing case at my job. One coworker has a medical condition requiring very regular meals. I'm supposed to never forget to eat (which I do regularly already, and instead of grabbing a candy bar or chips like a normal person, I simply wait until the next regularly scheduled meal.) Yet work doesn't actually offer a break from the endless meetings to actually eat lunch. Rarely do I have less than three days a week where I have solid meetings from well before to well after traditional lunch times.

You mean you don't like this menu?

Sunday: Home made chicken and onion barbecue folded calzone
Monday: Onion focacia.
Tuesday: Pineapple and ham on lightly risen pizza dough with light sauce.
Wednesday: Chicago style deep dish onion, green pepper and tomato pizza casserole
Thursday: Sausage and onion yogurt bread roll-up
Friday: Apple bread topped with cooked apples and cinnamon (a la "dessert pizza")
Saturday: Spinach and beef ravioli (because I ran out of pizza variations, and this at least uses many ingredients of pizza)

Store bought pizza has too much fat. Home made pizza doesn't need much at all. The main place I use fat on the above pizza like dishes I've made is either inherent in the meat, or if I'm putting a sauce directly onto uncooked dough to prevent it from soaking in too much.

Literally, the only one I have not made is combining apple bread (which I have made) with an apple/cinnamon topping (which I have made).

Pizza's main problem I've seen is that it has more calories in it than one expects by size and time to eat, so you eat a lot more food than you realize before you are full. This is also the case with many other dishes, including those popular at fast food joints.