I know it's not the same, but I have become slightly amused about the length of time to approve an application.
I signed up with Alta a couple of months ago. Most of the emails I've gotten so far are a combination of pay too little and too far away to make it work. But I was working a route that happened to be going through an area where they had an assignment. I thought "Hey, we're birdwatchers so I'm ideal for this assignment and will apply even though the pay is low because it's on my route and I'll get reimbursed for a bag of bird food we'll use anyway."
I took the test to be certified for the shop and applied. Crickets. Kept checking. Crickets. The day of my route, I printed out everything and took it with just in case they assigned it while I was driving. Nope.
Since then, they keep sending emails about it and the fee to do the assignment has now increased from $7 to $20 (plus the $15 reimbursement for bird food). It's too bad. I can't justify driving a 150 mile RT just for that now but would have already had it completed for them at the lower fee if they just would have assigned it.
As a result, I haven't even tried to apply for any other jobs. I don't want to waste my time reading materials and getting "certified" to do jobs if they won't actually be assigned to me.