Is it faster to retrieve bitcoins from exchanges than fiat? Quite often there are threads on various forums and complains on IRC channels that this or that exchange is not "playing nice" and has withdrawals (to a fiat currency like USD) taking a very long time. Very often invariably the excuse is that there has been a problem and that "employees are processing the backlogs" or something like that.

What about transferring bitcoins from the same exchange to your own bitcoin wallet? Is it something that also takes weeks and where the same excuses about backlogs are used? Or are the bitcoin transfer from exchanges to the wallet of your choice something that happens quite fast?
Just to give this a direct answer:

Yes, it's possible for coin withdrawals from an exchange to be processed instantly, and as far as I know most exchanges actually do so.