Rejected requests displaced valid queued work
An event-driven service kept only the newest pending request while a job was running. New requests replaced older ones, so the queue needed to distinguish work it would execute from events it would only acknowledge. That distinction was checked after replacement. An ineligible request displaced valid queued work, then was rejected when execution began. The displaced request had already been marked superseded. Rejecting the new request did not undo its effect on shared state: eligibility needed to be established before it entered the queue.