I live in Canada and am therefore not required to answer any question about where I live.



  • Silliness on a job application form. :)


     
     



  • My guess is there is a law in Canada regarding this. And first.



  • It's not about where you live.  It's about where the job you're applying for is.  Like if you lived in Afghanistan all your life, but want to move to Canada, they can't hold it against you.



  • @m0ffx said:

    My guess is there is a law in Canada regarding this. And first.

    Pretty much. We have some relatively strong privacy laws in Canada. Maybe not as strong as in Europe, but definitely stronger than the cellophane of American privacy. For the most part, if a company cannot tell you exactly how they will be using your private information, then they cannot request it and cannot require it.

    When this law was passed, it put the Henderson directory company out of business (you know, the books marketroids use because they contain forward/reverse listings by neighborhood, phone number, address, occupation, etc... for anyone stupid enough to fill out their survey cards). Once the law came into effect, Henderson was toast.



  • @MarcB said:

    @m0ffx said:

    My guess is there is a law in Canada regarding this. And first.

    Pretty much. We have some relatively strong privacy laws in Canada. Maybe not as strong as in Europe, but definitely stronger than the cellophane of American privacy. For the most part, if a company cannot tell you exactly how they will be using your private information, then they cannot request it and cannot require it.

    When this law was passed, it put the Henderson directory company out of business (you know, the books marketroids use because they contain forward/reverse listings by neighborhood, phone number, address, occupation, etc... for anyone stupid enough to fill out their survey cards). Once the law came into effect, Henderson was toast.

    In a lot of cases it doesn't deter you from signing up though.  "You'll be sent a confirmation email to activate whatever this thing is that you find you need to use.  view our privacy policy?  basically it says we will give your email address AIDS.  But you're welcome to do whatever task this is manually, now that you've discovered there's an automatic solution..."  [Sighs and clicks OK] 



  • Speaking of Canada, what is the name of that fantastic addition to modern cuisine, consisting of chips (that's fries to the Americans), cheese and gravy? I had it when I went there and now I'd be hooked if only I weren't too lazy to make the gravy.



  • Cheesy chips? It's known in England too, although I don't know people to have gravy with them.



  • @ChZEROHag said:

    Speaking of Canada, what is the name of that fantastic addition to modern cuisine, consisting of chips (that's fries to the Americans), cheese and gravy? I had it when I went there and now I'd be hooked if only I weren't too lazy to make the gravy.

    It's called poutine, and it's the only worthwhile culinary development from Canada.  Well, that and Tim Hortons...



  • @bstorer said:

    @ChZEROHag said:

    Speaking of Canada, what is the name of that fantastic addition to modern cuisine, consisting of chips (that's fries to the Americans), cheese and gravy? I had it when I went there and now I'd be hooked if only I weren't too lazy to make the gravy.

    It's called poutine, and it's the only worthwhile culinary development from Canada.  Well, that and Tim Hortons...

    Heh... Rick Mercer (think of him as a Canadian Steven Colbert, though This Hour Has 22 Minutes predates the contemporary Daily Show / Colbert Report format by many years) once got George W Bush to talk about how healthy his relationship was with Canadian Prime Minister Poutine.  It was pretty golden.



  • Unless this a site dedicated towards telecomuting or other long-distance work, this is sort of WTF.  I mean, 99% of the people who answer that question are probably living in Canada...

     It seems like a "No answer" option would be better, and then companies that want that info and are legally allowed to require it can reject applications marked with that choice.
     



  • Notice underneath the drop-down list the tail end of an address in Ohio. This could be a single large company, or an employment agency, with operations in the USA and Canada. It wouldn't even be unreasonable to commute from Ohio to Canada - and with the CA$ worth more than the US$, you could even be rich!



  • I think you all missed the point.  The fact that Canadians don't have to give this information is no WTF... it's privacy.  The WTF is the instruction to "not answer this question" and then the interface being such that you have to select an answer anyway.


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