this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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At least you're not being refused "because you don't have children" - apparently leave requests for parents get priority in some places. Nearly got trapped by that in one place I worked. Leave request approved, then suddenly cancelled because someone else had kids and wanted the same date range as leave. At the time, my workplace didn't know I had a family too. I really enjoyed ripping them a new one over that.
Seriously, a bot probably has a standard time frame for booking leave requests - and your request might have been just outside it - is one month the same as 30 days? - depends on the month. And a ranked list of requests stacked up to fill once it got freedom to grant leave. This list might well be ranked within the organisation, by tenure etc. too. Your request might have been just below the cut off point in the allowed parameters.
Doesn't make the situation any better or less aggravating.
I don't think they are actually allowed to do that, it's not legal to discriminate based on 'parental status' and that goes both ways.
My workplace doesn't do that, but there are different leave arrangements for 'high demand periods' over the school holidays. It's a ballot so that it doesn't always go to the same people though, not a discriminatory allocation.