Shift-clicking too quickly does nothing

On a multiplayer server, singleplayer untested. I had torches on my offhand, and I was trying to click on a furnace (front face).
I jumped and shift clicked on the furnace as I landed, the torch was not placed, and neither did the GUI pop up. Theoretically either the torch should be placed or the GUI would pop up, but literally nothing happened. I was able to recreate this many times with precise timing. Also, I also had 2 times where both the torch was placed and the GUI opened up, but it was too hard to recreate consistently.