Not Thinking Outside The Police Box

(Our bookstore has its own TARDIS that we use to display Doctor Who and other science fiction books and toys on. The following conversation between one of our booksellers and an indignant customer recently happened:)

Customer: “Why do you have a police box in your store?”

Bookseller: “It’s from the show Doctor Who.”

Customer: *blank look* “I am unfamiliar with that.”

Bookseller: “It’s a British science fiction show.”

Customer: *haughtily* “Aren’t you afraid of the implications?”

Bookseller: “Ma’am?”

Customer: “That you are misleading people. What if someone had an actual emergency and needed to call the police? And all you have this fake police phone box.”

Bookseller: “We have actual telephones. And everyone here could easily dial 911 on their cells.”

Customer: “You’re lying to people.”

Employee: “It’s a British phone box from the 1960s. Even if it worked, all we’d get were British police from the 1960s and they’d have to come a very long way. Or we might get the Doctor.”

Customer: “Who?”

Employee: “Yes.”