It depends completely on the organization. The one I'm in it absolutely is not a scam, my first year I took 168 hours and nobody blinked, in fact (we have a po

It depends completely on the organization. The one I'm in it absolutely is not a scam, my first year I took 168 hours and nobody blinked, in fact (we have a policy that over 160 requires 2nd level manager approval), when I set everything up to take 159 hours my manager reached out to me an told me to go ahead and take the last day I hadn't included in that request even though it put me over 160, and it was approved the same day. YMMV -- other places I've been told are not so good about it.