In addition to the error G, notes, your test is flawed as why would you use like without a wildcard? If that is what I want I will use "=" and that works fine on a variable length character column.

I have to admit I originally thought trailing spaces were trimmed from variable length columns and they are not which does appear to affect Like, but I rarely, if ever, use Like with a leading wildcard and trailing spaces as the leading wildcard in itself will most likely cause the query to not use an any indexes. It is disconcerting that "=" ignores the trailing spaces and "Like" does not, but I have not encountered this because when I use wildcards it is at the end of the statement not the beginning.