Vacation / request-offs are approved based on every office in the entire city and surrounding area. I work for a company that contracts our work to other local offices and firms. We have a half-dozen, maybe more offices in random buildings working with various companies, and each office is very specialized to the needs that each specific company has.

If I request a day off, but Karen - who I have never met - who works in an office in the next town over also requested that day off, and we don't have a spare "floater" to cover, I can't also have that day off. It is ridiculously stupid, but luckily I have a boss that agrees with me about that, and she'll grant any vacation request without making us submit it to corporate. Like, I feel like that shit should be up to the digression of each site's manager; they know better than corporate how we operate on a day-to-day level and how many people we can be down before it becomes a hardship for our site. (And honestly, even though I work in a five-person office, there have been days we've gotten by with just two people.)