Workload

Mrs. Franco's logic escapes me. First she says that she came to agree with her husband that their workloads should be along "traditional" lines. She then blames the women's movement because she has a double workload, while her husband's workload hasn't increased. What the women's movement taught us was that when two people work outside the home, two people work inside the home. If she really wants a traditional arrangement, she would quit her outside job. MIRIAM ALBERT Thousand Oaks

SACRAMENTO — California's financial lifeline runs through a sprawling complex of brick buildings near a freeway on the edge of Sacramento. That's where hundreds of workers open millions of envelopes, fish out the checks and feed them into three machines that whir, clank, stamp and sort them into neat piles. Every afternoon for a few weeks in April, as Californians pay their state taxes, a courier ferries them to eight banks to nourish the money-hungry government. Meanwhile, lobbyists, lawmakers and activists — people whose jobs hinge on this seemingly mundane process — huddle by their computers and wait for the daily tally, which they'll tweet and email like the play-by-play of a championship game.

Post-election press release from the Veterans Administration Medical Center in La Jolla: "Recently, in order to achieve geographic equity to access of care for veterans, the Veterans Administration established a national limitation on the level of discretionary workload provided." Translation: The VA cut back on medical care for veterans.

On the night before he released 56 exotic animals from their cages on his Ohio farm and killed himself with a bullet to the head, Terry Thompson reportedly turned to the man who worked with him and said he "had a plan. " He was determined to "find out" about the things that were bothering him, including questions about his marriage and how he would face his impending confinement over a criminal conviction, according to a report released Wednesday. The report, by investigators with the Muskingum County Sheriff's Office, doesn't explain why Thompson decided to free the animals, but it does offer the clearest picture to date of the events leading up to the tragedy.

During my many years of schooling, I thought I had learned how business and banking work. Then Bank of America decides to charge an application fee that is several thousand dollars more than any of its competitors to process applications to refinance home mortgages ("B of A Imposes Hefty Fees to Stem Tide of Refinance Requests," Feb. 13). B of A said it was "forced to impose the fees to reduce the workload created by the current refinancing frenzy." Wouldn't it make more sense to hire more loan processors to handle the increased workload, and in turn generate more business for the bank, instead of discouraging homeowners from even applying to B of A in the first place?

The Moorpark Rotary Club has named an eight-year veteran of the Ventura County Sheriff's Department as the city's Officer of the Year for 1995. Senior Deputy Ron Nelson accepted the award at a recent luncheon. Nelson has been working with the Moorpark division since 1990. He works in Moorpark's detective division and with the Gang Suppression Unit. His supervisor, Sgt. Terry Hughes, said Nelson stood out not because of a single thing, but because of his "day-to-day workload." "He comes in, and he works nonstop," Hughes said.

The workload of many county employees has increased as a result of budget and staff reductions during the last several years. Although staff was reduced, the workload was not. Remaining staff were required to be even more productive to meet the county's service requirements. We met this requirement and increased productivity; now, we are being asked to do even more with significantly less salary. The Education Incentive Program was implemented to motivate employees to pursue advanced education and reward them for this effort, thus enhancing retention and retraining of the county's workforce.

Are you faking it when you go on vacation? Many people are, according to TripAdvisor's 2011 Travel Trends Forecast . The website, which features user reviews of hotels and other tourist sites, surveyed more than 3,000 of its users last year and reported that 69% said they connected with work while on vacation, and 62% said they checked their work e-mails. Blurring the lines between work and vacation isn't new, but job creep might lend credence to a decidedly underwhelming travel trend: the "fake-ation.

I agree with the writer of "They'll Skip the Tips -- and the Cruise" [Letters, Aug. 22], especially after seeing a TV program. Viewers were taken behind the scenes of a large cruise-ship where they learned that room stewards are paid almost no wages, have impossible workloads -- so much so that they have to pay others to do their daily allotted tasks -- and survive on tips that are added automatically to passengers' credit card bills. This TV show confirmed what I learned during the last cruise I took.

Re "O'Neill, Bono Differ on Needs of Poor," May 23: How quaint a vision! Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill goes to a market in Ghana as a representative of this hyper-capitalistic administration and sees little, budding global entrepreneurs and loan recipients--people we can do business with if only they were given the freedom to work for us, making more of whatever they make and doing it for less, unconstrained by pesky regulations regarding wages,...

Ending a four-year dispute, Disneyland Resort in Anaheim has reached a five-year contract agreement with 2,100 hotel workers. The contract, which covers housekeepers, food and beverage workers, front-desk staff and other hourly workers at the Disneyland Hotel, the Grand Californian Hotel and the Paradise Pier Hotel, includes wage increases and a decreased workload for housekeepers. Negotiations had bogged down recently over healthcare cost increases in Disneyland's proposed contracts.

Reporting from Las Vegas — His jersey soaked, his shoulders glistening with sweat, Ishmael Wainwright managed a weary smile as he posed for celebratory pictures with teammates. The Kansas City 76ers had just won the 17-under invitational division of the prestigious Las Vegas Fab 48 tournament, capping a stretch of three games in 11 hours Monday and eight games in four days. "I just want to go home and go to sleep," said Wainwright, a junior forward from Raytown, Mo., who is coveted by UCLA and other top college programs.

Are you faking it when you go on vacation? Many people are, according to TripAdvisor's 2011 Travel Trends Forecast . The website, which features user reviews of hotels and other tourist sites, surveyed more than 3,000 of its users last year and reported that 69% said they connected with work while on vacation, and 62% said they checked their work e-mails. Blurring the lines between work and vacation isn't new, but job creep might lend credence to a decidedly underwhelming travel trend: the "fake-ation.

The question of Pau Gasol's fatigue gained some traction when Kobe Bryant weighed in on it. "If he's tired, he's tired," Bryant said Tuesday after the Lakers lost to Memphis, 98-96. "There's not much you can do about it. " Bryant said he could sense Gasol's weariness "in certain stretches, yeah. He's been playing a lot. " Gasol has played about 45 minutes each of the last three games. Considered an MVP candidate just a week ago, his production slipped in losses to Indiana and Memphis.

It was the end of the Lakers' practice Saturday, and there was center Andrew Bynum working with a medicine ball at the far end of the court. He wore a brace on his surgically repaired right knee while doing the exercises, in which Bynum alternated between facing the wall and having his back to the wall, his body rolling up and down on the medicine ball under the watchful eyes of Alex McKechnie , the Lakers' athletic performance coordinator....

UCLA coaches borrowed their new "pistol" offense from Nevada because they needed to improve a running game that had all but ground to a halt the last two seasons. The Bruins ranked 97th out of 120 major-college teams in rushing last season, an upgrade from their standing at 116 in 2008. But a dramatic rise is promised by those doing the actual running. Rotating in the single-back formation will be sophomore Johnathan Franklin , junior Derrick Coleman and freshmen Malcolm Jones and Jordon James . Confidence is high.

Your Oct. 6 article on the Immigration and Naturalization Service's citizenship efforts is based on faulty information concerning the integrity of our Citizenship USA program. Citizenship USA is an effective response to an unprecedented tripling of our naturalization workload in 1995 and 1996. The program has maintained and strengthened the legal scrutiny and administrative steps for citizenship, and at no time has the program been lax in enforcing the INS rules. In fiscal year 1996, we denied citizenship to 17% of the applicants, which is consistent with--and in some instances higher than--denial rates in previous years.

I am curious about Mr. K. Dellinger's credentials (letter Jan. 6 re: M. Yarber's column Dec. 30) concerning his ability to define what a professional is. Since when does being a member of a union preclude one from being a professional? If private parties, rather than school districts, had to pay us, I'm sure LAUSD educators would regain their recent 10% pay cut and then some. Since Mr. Dellinger proposes that only (professionals) such as doctors, lawyers, and CPAs are real professionals, does he mean to infer that those illustrious professionals were educated by non-professionals?

Reporting from Detroit -- As dominant as Fernando Rodney and Kevin Jepsen have been, and as inconsistent as the rest of the bullpen has been, there would seem to be a temptation to expand the use of Rodney and Jepsen, whose appearances have been limited to one inning or less. Not going to happen, Mike Scioscia said. "One inning … one inning," the Angels' manager said, shaking his head. "There could be some circumstances to expand, but right now it's one inning.