156 T HE P ROBLEM -S OLVING S IDE the father out of the way, occupied, and feeling a part of the process. Even if all the customer can really do, metaphorically speaking, is to boil water, the effort has palliative effects. The bank customer who failed to endorse her paycheck when she deposited it, and thereby caused a string of bounced checks, feels better about the recovery effort when given a part in fixing the problem. An assignment like "Give me a list of all the people you've written checks to" or "call the people you've written checks to and ask them to resubmit them for payment" gives the customer back some sense of psychological control. Axiom 4: Customers React More Strongly to "Fairness" Failures Than to "Honest Mistakes" Researcher Kathleen Seiders of Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, * has found that when customers believe they have been treated unfairly, their reactions tend to be immediate, emotional, and enduring. In other words, if the customer feels