Yuck! There are reasons processes like that exist as annoying as they are. At a certain scale orgs have to make a queue or else nothing gets done. I work at a scale up and have seen the phenomenon with my own eyes. Easy enough when there are 10 employees. A lot harder when you 10x that number.

The situation you describe does sound pretty extreme though. Maybe your org is large enough to warrant it who knows. I don't think I could work someplace that had that much red tape.