With you on this from a pure Economics point of view (that was my major after all!) but from a "I'm at a regional and am concerned about my job security" aspect, I am considering it. With that said, I probably won't do it; but I recognize that's an asset of mine I could if I wanted to.
Great question. For as shitty as it is for me, I respect the guy who has set the policy and understand why he has implemented it and the fact that in my impression he has set the expectation straigt and held his standard makes it an easier pill to swallow than counting on it for 2 years then getting denied it. In short. his reasoning is "we are always telling Millington we are short on bodies and are understaffed. If I let people take terminal, then I am sending an inconsistent messages to them."
In my particular scenario, what makes it worse is I am also the only one in the command with a certain qual- I am trying to change that, but getting admin to get a new body sent to the schools I went to has proven less than easy. I'm also under the impression that they won't send a body until my PRD, terminal leave or Skillbridge, so it's not an easy sell to make.
Leave is an entitlement, not a request. At any given point, a command should be able to operate with 8.5% of their people on leave. I wouldn’t care if one is consistent with this kind of blanket policy, that just means they’re consistently wrong.
Take your leave. Drop tues-Thurs leave chits a couple times in a row. When one gets denied, start a paper trail and ask why. It’s literally thousands of bucks this one guy has decided you don’t deserve because he can’t manage his personnel or cares more about perception than reality.
And we wonder why people don’t want to stay in the canoe club run by mutant clowns.