With regards to the flica thing -- it's a combination of Mesa setting the parameters too high and other factors. The company uses historic absence data to determine reserve coverage, and I'm sure you remember what it was like last year. Because Mesa couldn't staff properly it became common place to use sick calls as a way just to get a day or two off to see the family. Well, now when they look back on this day last year they see they had 9 sick calls/unvails/etc, so they set the min reserve coverage to 9 even though maybe 4 of those were just people who couldn't get the day off.

Also, flica is first come first served. If you were denied, other people may not have been. I wish there was a way to see how many reserves the company wanted, how many they had and how many previous flica requests were approved that day(s).