I've only ever had one experience that toed the line of a situation where an inspection approval hinged on something totally unrelated to the results of an inspection. It was the final inspection to receive our CO for our office space. Every inspection up until then was done by inspectors that were courteous and professional, and was beyond my expectations of how the process could have gone. The final inspection was done by none other than the Fire Marshall himself. Not someone from the office of. At the end of the inspection, he said every thing looks good and sees no issues, except.... Our office space was in a large building with other commercial offices as well as residential space on the upper floors. Apparently, the city and the building owner had been going back and forth with updates to required exit signs and other items that are necessary for commercial but not for residential spaces. The city had decided the owner was not holding up his end of the deals, and the Fire Marshall decided to hold our CO hostage over these other deals that had nothing to do with us. We had to call in a few favors to get this resolved, and had we not had a particular contact available to us, there's no telling how long we'd have needed to wait vs the less than 48 hours it did take