Friends season 9, episode 11
Original air date: January 09, 2003

Phoebe and Joey are at Central Perk, and Phoebe asks Joey if she can have a bite of his muffin and a sip of his coffee. He agrees, and she dumps his coffee into a thermos and makes off with his muffin. Joey asks her, basically, "what the hell?" and she explains that she's really broke. He offers to lend her money, but she says she makes it a policy never to borrow money from friends ( "that's why Richard Dreyfus and I don't talk anymore"). So Joey offers instead to get her a job as an extra on Days of Our Lives, and she jumps at the chance.

Rachel's getting ready to go back to work, and when she drops into her office to check on things, she finds a new guy, Gavin (Dermot Mulroney, at her desk. He explains that he's taken over her job in her absence, and he's doing such a good job that there may not be room for her when she comes back in two weeks. Her boss shows up and praises Gavin for doing fantastic work in her absence, and she really freaks out. She tells the boss that she's coming back today, which is a surprise to Ross and Emma, who had stopped by the office with Rachel. Rachel begs Ross to just look after Emma for the day, so that she can take her job back, and she sets about reclaiming her job. First order of business is to show Gavin who's boss, which she does by breaking her office chair. She then demands that he show her the presentation he's making to Ralph Lauren the next day.

Meanwhile, Monica's organizing Chandler's job search and puts her obsessive, anal nature to work filing job seeker tips, job descriptions, and so forth, in color-coded, alphabetized folders. Fortunately, or unfortunately for Monica, Chandler starts with advertising and decides that it's a sure winner. He figures he's a natural for selling things, because it's all about funny catchphrases, which he nimbly demonstrates with a snack plate lying on the table: "Cheese - it's milk that you chew ... Crackers - because your cheese needs a buddy ... a grape - because who can get a watermelon in your mouth?" Monica gets Chandler an interview with a guy she went to high school with, but with phrases like that, you can imagine how successful the interview is.

Phoebe's not having much more success as an extra than Chandler is as an ad man. She's so nervous in front of the camera that she shakes uncontrollably, clattering the tray she's supposed to carry as a nurse in an operating scene. Joey gives her some advice - really get into the character. If she doesn't get that tray over to the operating table at just the right time, the man on the operating table will die.

That works, but this "in-character" thing poses a problem when she comes back in the next scene as a waitress at a caf%eacut; where Dr. Drake Ramoray is having lunch. She asks Joey how fans are supposed to believe that she's a waitress when previously she was a nurse. He creates a backstory for her character in which she's got to work two jobs to support her kids, since she's a single mother. She asks why she wouldn't say hello to Drake, since they work at the hospital together. Joey explains that she's mad at Drake because they slept together and he never called. This leads to her character smacking Drake on the back of the head in one take, and then launching into a tirade about how he slept with her and never called, which many of the other extras in the scene take literally. Joey, after defending her to the director in the hospital scene and arguing that she not be fired, tells the director that it's now OK to fire her.

Rachel works her ass off to be ready for the Ralph presentation the next day, but when she arrives at the office, her boss tells her it's been moved from morning to afternoon. She tells him she can't do it that morning, because she's looking after Emma until Ross can take her for the afternoon. He tells her that Gavin will just have to do it by himself, but Gavin very gallantly steps in and tells Rachel that he's impressed by how hard she's worked and offers to look after Emma while she does the presentation. She's skeptical, but takes him up on it.