It’s called the Zeigarnik effect, first studied by the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik in 1927, after her professor observed that waiters remembered the details of unpaid orders but forgot orders whose bills had been settled.
—
Patricia Marx,
New Yorker,
15 June 2026
When dinner was done, the waiters would turn into drag queens and perform cabaret on a stage built over the swimming pool.
—
Richard Johnson,
New York Daily News,
7 June 2026
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