You ate DiGorno's frozen? That's strange behavior.

Afew years ago, i scored an interview for a warehouse/shipping position at Columbia Sportwear. Their Portland warehouse is just off N. Marine Dr. Anyone who knows this area knows that it's a long stretch of warehouses, ship yards, production plants, rails, and depots. The #16 is the only bus that goes out there - and it runs rush hours only and never on weekends.

Still, riding the MAX yellow out to Expo and a bike from there is doable. But by the time i got out to the Columbia sportswear location, i find out that the interview is actually at their office in VANCOUVER! So that was that, meh.

also of concern are employers who require a personal vehicle as qualification for employment -- several job ads on craigslist show this. the employee, not the employer, should be allowed to determine the best method of transportation to and from work. i think i'm going to start a petition.

On a similar note, I'd love it if prospective employers were not allowed to ask whether or not you had a car. Bikes definitely count as reliable transportation.

Yeah and the jobs paying less than ten an hour that want you to have a car what a laugh! I can't afford a car on that kind of pay...

Yeah, it's... odd [to put it mildly] that employers generally consider "reliable transportation" to mean having your own personal vehicle. As fucking if a person with his/her own car NEVER breaks down, never gets flat tires, never gets stuck in traffic, etc.

@everyone: Just had an HR meeting at my workplace a week or two ago about hiring people, and it turns out that the legality of asking people what kind of transportation they use is really iffy. Instead, employers/interviewers should ask (and ONLY ask) "Do you have reliable transportation to work?"

If you are in an interview and the interviewer asks you what mode of transportation you use, you can reply "I have a reliable mode of transportation," and they can't legally ask for more detail than that or not hire you for suspecting that you do not have a car.

Now, if you are one of the kind of smelly belligerent assholes that frequent the mercury comments section, you might not get the job anyway. And I promise you it's not about not having a car.

^ You know what, you were 100% spot on until your snide 3rd paragraph.

This is a problem even in Portland. I would not have had such a long stretch of unemployment between '08-and '10 if not for the fact that every easy to land job was out in some far flung location with scant bus service. And the salaries they offer make even a weekly bus ticket costly. I had left Boise, ID to come to a place with this great public transportation system that would make jobs accessible only to find the same basic situation here.

Oh, and Ms. Mirk, had your parents been home, they might have told you that frozen pizza tastes best when removed from the box and cooked in some sort of oven. I hope you at least removed the plastic first.

Thank you for posting this, Sarah.

Interesting to see my hometown rates better than a lot of places on this.