MD;
I won't say that our staffing is any better than in the UK or most of Europe, in fact in many of our facilities the staffing is getting quite thin. I think that the mind set of most US controllers is just a bit different than that of most European controllers when it comes to GA. Not a good or bad thing, just different, as is our view and approach to how we do our airspace and restrictions to flight.
Sometimes to our chagrin, we probably take on a bit more than we should, just due to our way of doing business. We don't have the limits that you hear of in many European circles. We do have recomended numbers that a certain sector should work, but they are always guidelines and are never hard numbers. ATC is a bit too difficult to give them hard numbers. There are sectors where you can find your self working a LOT of departures and a couple of overflights mixed in and it is not straining you too bad. But then another day, you only have 2/3's of the departures but the rest are overflights or military with a lot of strange requests and just puts you straight down the pooper... <shrug> Our job is like that every day over here. Ya just never know what you are going to end up with <G>. There are times where I do have to just say no to additional work load items like flight following (RIS) to additional aircraft. The good news though is that in about 15 to 20 minutes, I generally have things sorted out enough that I can get back to the other aircraft. If the other aircraft was a C172, you can bet that he/she is still out there. <G>
Take care
Scott
PS. Glad that you enjoyed your flight here... The Bay Area was always one of my favorite places to fly...