Cannot Merge, Even if Given Approval and Maintainer

local_merge_master|682x335

My company has a very simple git repo, with a remote master and other local branches that are pushed and merged with master. I have been given Maintainer status, but, even if I approve this merge request (that I made), I cannot merge it.

My workflow on my local repo is as follows:
git checkout -b local_003 git add code.py
git commit -m "information on code.py" git push origin local_003

Then I get on GitLab, go to the merge request (as in the image), and press “approve”. As Maintainer, I should be able to click “merge”. Why can I not merge? The “eligible approvers” in the image are of the same rank I am (Maintainers).

I tried merging “using the command line” (as GitLab suggests using a hyperlink) but it just ended up in a detached HEAD trainwreck on my local repo that did nothing.

It’s true that master is protected on the global repo (gitlab), but I’m not force pushing, I’m just pushing, and, further: as Maintainer I could just remove the protected status. It also did nothing. Yes, I restarted the browser as well, relogged in and out, etc.