With nine people in the house, Mike gets frustrated when he can never get any time on the phone for himself. He decides to install a second phone line, but that only makes the problem worse. Thanks to one of Alice's ideas, Mike decides to install a pay phone in the family room. The plan works ... until Mike needs to use the phone one day to set up an appointment with a hard-to-please, heavily scrutinizing developer ... and when the phone company cuts the call off and Mike doesn't have a dime, the developer isn't too amused at all. But in the end, the pay phone proves its worth, both for Mike's blood pressure and securing a multi-million-dollar contract for Mike's firm.

Both Greg and Marcia rush home after school with the news that they're both running for student body president. May the best candidate win, as the boys and girls each take sides and soon each one of them is accusing the other of sabotage. Later, rudeness and apathy abound as each candidate rehearses their campaign speech, leading to a stern lecture from Mike about family unity and how they will be a family far longer than either Greg or Marcia will be class president. It's a speech that Greg take seriously when he fires his campaign manager for recommending that they spread a lie around school that Marcia was seen in the balcony of the local movie theater with an older boy. Marcia (who witnessed the exchange without Greg knowing it) realizes that, while Greg is indeed intensely competitive, he also has integrity and will stick up for his siblings ... and then understands that Greg is the best for the job after all.