Have you ever gotten in line at 4:30 in the morning to apply for a job?

One person did that Saturday for a chance to work at Maryland Live! Casino, said Lynn Norris, the company’s vice president of human resources.

The casino’s job fair, which was held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and hosted in conjunction with the Anne Arundel Workforce Development Corporation, drew 1,015 people, she said.

As of Monday evening, there are 69 positions posted on the company’s website.

The casino opens in its first phase in June, at which point it will have 850 employees. At full capacity, which will happen in the fall, the casino will employ 1,500.

So far, the company has filled more than 100 positions, with a few dozen more slated to start soon, and others still who have been sent offer letters, said Carmen Gonzales, Maryland Live! Casino spokeswoman.

The casino has received about 30,000 job applications total, she said.

That’s about 25,000 applications in two months: When the casino opened its Employment Center in January, they had about 5,000 applications.

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It’s been one week since a New York Times report on the Tribune Co. and its corporate culture hit newsstands and the Web and the story is still generating chatter — locally and nationally, online and in print.

The story generated local interest for obvious reasons: Tribune Co. owns the Baltimore Sun, and its takeover of the daily paper and other prestigious media properties in January 2008, and its subsequent bankruptcy filing, have been closely monitored.

More titillating than its “financial hubris,” however, is the New York Times’ account of “sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective” at the Chicago-based company. Call it Senior Executives Gone Wild (allegedly — said senior executives have denied much of the bad behavior recounted in the story, and board members say the stand behind Tribune management and their leadership of the company).

Three different people mentioned the story to me at last week’s “TechNite” celebration, I guess because I work in media and so the assumption was I would naturally be interested in any corporate shenanigans at The Sun’s parent company. And I suppose I am to an extent, in an I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-reading sort of way.

(Posting pictures of your office poker party on Facebook? Really? Plus, there’s the unintentional comedy of a corporate memo containing the phrase, “News and Information is the NEW Rock n Roll.”)

What I’m more interested in, though, is the whole notion of corporate culture.

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What do Marriott International, McCormick & Co., LifeBridge Health and W. L. Gore & Associates all have in common? They landed on the Fortune 100 Best Places to Work list.

Each is headquartered in Maryland, aside from W.L. Gore, which sits on Maryland’s list because of its large location in Elkton.

Better yet for out-of-work Marylanders, they’re all hiring.

As of last week, hotelier Marriott (#82 on Fortune’s list) had openings for about 4,700 employees worldwide, with a decent chunk of positions open in Maryland. And, they’re not all housekeeping or front desk posts — many of them are in sales, accounting or IT, with a few interior design and corporate counsel gigs, too.

What makes these places so great?

McCormick (#72), the biggest name in spices, has 14 “junior” boards, allowing employees to have a say in company business and offers domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples.

LifeBridge (#96), a Baltimore-based health system, offers tuition reimbursement of up to $5,000, entry-level employees can take computer courses to help them move up and they offer adoption assistance to employees.

At Marriott’s Bethesda HQ, the company has an on-site gym and daycare, and globally, its team is made up of 61 percent minorities. Employees also get great perks, like hotel discounts.

“Associates,” as they’re known at Gore (#13), are “in charge” and work in a pretty structure-free environment. Bosses at this innovative company, best known for its GORE-TEX fabric, are called “sponsors.” Enough said.

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After I wrote an article last week on the staggeringly low number of women who fill seats on the boards of Maryland’s publicly owned companies, I heard from the people who do marketing for Norway (yes, Norway the country) here in Baltimore.

It seems that Norwegians are far more forward-thinking when it comes to gender equality than we are in the United States.

In fact, the country has a mandate that all state-owned and publicly-owned firms have at least 40 percent representation by women on their boards (by comparison, women fill 8.8 percent of Maryland’s boards). Breaking the law has a pretty heavy punishment — the government threatened to shut down any company that did not comply by 2008.

Without the law, an expert said it may have taken Norway 100 years to have women make up 40 percent of its boards. Let’s hope Maryland can get there before the end of the century.

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One of my coworkers recently attempted to break the workplace taboo against shorts. It was unsuccessful. (She asked me to note here that she believed the $60 price tag of the shorts would make them suitable for the office. So noted.)

And now she sends me a story from The New York Times, discussing whether the growing casualness of the workplace has finally opened the door for office shorts. The story gives some examples of the once-forbidden — sock-less loafers, tie-less necks and the entire concept of Casual Fridays — and a couple quotes from people who, I’m guessing, are painfully hip.

Then these few sentences bring us plunging back to reality:

“Yet none of the New York City banks, law firms, stock brokerages or hospitals contacted by a reporter last week considered shorts an acceptable part of a work uniform, and for reasons that varied from the need to preserve institutional decorum to hygiene (imagine a hairy leg in an O.R.)

Still, it is probably worth remembering that there was a time when politicians were seldom seen, even out of the office, without their decorous suit coats, and never in short pants (Nixon famously wore shoes on the beach). And it was only a short while ago that news anchors who ventured out on combat assignment did so in more protective khaki than a Victorian ornithologist braving the wilds of Borneo.”

So what do you think? Can you imagine a world where it will ever be appropriate to go to work at “banks, law firms, stock brokerages or hospitals” while wearing shorts?

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist

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In 2006, I worked at a small publishing company with a female production manager who would often get visibly annoyed with fast-approaching deadlines. On a couple of occasions, she dropped a few four letter words with our boss present. And, five months into her tenure, she was fired after an outburst.

Her behavior wasn’t completely professional, but, to be fair, the company – a startup – demanded a lot from her. And new research shows that the scales might be tipped in favor of male employees when it comes to workplace anger.

When men lose their cool at work, they appear authoritative, the study from Psychological Science found. When women do it, they’re usually penalized.

When the study participants watched video demonstrations of ‘botched’ office situations, they labeled the angry women as incompetent, out of control, and overpaid. When men got angry, participants assumed it was reasonable.

The good news for professional women: when they explained why they were angry, women gained respect, while men lost it (for appearing weak).

Is it appropriate for an employee to get angry in the workplace? To what degree? And under what circumstances?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

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Are you being productive today at the office? If not, you might just want to give up and call it a week.

According to a survey by Accountemps, Tuesday is by far the most productive day of the workweek. Or so say a whopping 57 percent of respondents. A mere 3 percent say Fridays are the most productive (nothing too surprising there).

I can understand answering “Tuesday.” It’s really the only day — for me, at least — where I don’t still miss the previous weekend, and don’t yet yearn for the coming weekend.

Of course, the answer also works if everyone was just guessing randomly at their responses. I vaguely recall learning in high school that a testmaker with the potential multiple choice answers of A, B, C, D, and E will most likely put the answer at B. The thinking goes:

• Most people are right-handed, so they will hide the answer away from the side where they naturally rest their hand. That knocks out D and E. And also C, just to be safe.
• A is the first answer someone sees, so too obvious. It’s out.
• That leaves B. Or Tuesday, if you’re dealing with the five days of the workweek.

Then again, I could just be over-thinking the matter, and both the glasses were poisoned the whole time.

Anyway, on which day do you get the most work done? Feel free to guess.

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist

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If it is, it may have something to do with miscommunication between male and female coworkers.

Not that I’m pointing fingers; I’m merely adding 1 + 1 = 2.

1. More women say they heard sexually inappropriate comments at work last year (38%, up from 22% in 2006. Source: Novations Group). The percentage of men who reported inappropriate comments held steady at 45%.

Why the increase? Well, it could be that male employees are lowering their guards around women they view as peers, says law prof Paul Secunda. The problem with that is what’s reasonable to a guy may not be reasonable to a gal. That difference “shows up in sexual-harassment case law,” he told BusinessWeek.

2. Or, it could be that the men are simply misinterpreting female behavior – something that happens frequently, according to a new NIH-funded study.

The young men who were part of the study had trouble noticing and interpreting the meanings of females’ non-verbal cues:

Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall.

So, is the workplace less appropriate than in years past? Or are there simply differences in interpretation between genders that are biologically driven?

What else could explain the spike in sexual comments at work?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

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Time magazine’s blog says the cubicle, our “soul-destroying workspace,” is 40 years old. So, apparently, it’s time for a face lift.

Dilbert’s Scott Adams and a bunch of office designers have created the ideal cubicle (there’s a hammock and a bunch of options for your feet, including shag carpet and freshly cut grass.)

I’d go with a sand beach to wiggle my toes in. And maybe a heat lamp.

What would you want?

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

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Do you work too hard? Are you too much of a leader? Are you just too terrific?

According to a piece on AskMen.com, two of these three “weaknesses” are on the short list of ways to answer the “What’s your biggest weakness?” question in a job interview.

The five:

“I tend to talk too much.”
“I project self-expectations.”
“I get attached to projects.”
“I assume the leader role when it’s not designated to me.”
“I’m a workaholic.”

So, what do you think? What’s the best – or worst – line you’ve said or heard? Seems to me you could cover all these answers simply by claiming you suffer from “excessive awesomeness.”

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist

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