West Coast;
I've heard this argument in ATPAC and smiled at it... I gave the senario of what most of our sectors run like and then threw out some verbage that you would normally hear on the radio and then asked the pilots in the room what was going on. Each gave their thoughts on it and not a single one of them were correct. Now, if you know that you are working a final controller who is only working one runway, then you probably will know what is going on to an extent, but in most departure, arrival freqs as well as enroute freqs, most pilots have no real idea of what the true picture is...
regards
Scott