Staff Infection

Episode Guide:

To help get the company on the straight and narrow, Michael has started working through weekends. It's while he's driving to work alongside George Michael, trying to recapture their Saturday morning bike rides, that he gets a call from Lucille and heads to her penthouse.

At the model home, Tobias is missing. Lindsay finds that he went to work, where he'll be playing "Frightened Inmate #2" in an Oz-style prison drama. Lindsay, of course, takes this as a challenge and sets herself to the task of finding a job.

Arriving at Lucille's place, Michael discovers that his mother needs money as Kitty didn't send her paycheck this month. And, oh yeah, Lupe has the day off so the penthouse has gone to hell. Michael was unaware that his family was getting paid to do nothing while he was busting his hump 7 days a week to make his salary. He decides that the Bluths have to work for their pay, assigning tasks.

Annyong is already working at the Bluth Banana Stand, filling Lucille with Pride. Buster is going to be the copy boy at the office while Lindsay covers phones. Being Lindsay, however, she walks into a staff meeting and announces that she wants people to have fun and sends them to lunch on the company.

Cut to the banana stand, where George Michael is fretting over his father's extra hours. Over at the Orange Country Prison, Tobias has checked himself in as a guest, working with the suspiciously familiar new warden to build his character background. He is roomed with George Sr, which is greeted with less-than-ample enthusiasm by the Bluth patriarch.

After witnessing their inability to handle themselves in the office environment, Michael assigns Gob and Buster to a construction site and Lindsay takes over the office while he's dropping them off. She renovates the office, giving the FBI an opportunity to wiretap and search the office while disguised as contractors. The employees, lost without Michael, end up on a bus that's reserved for Lupe's family reunion.

At the prison, White Power Bill is threatening George with a pipe, demanding that he stop converting inmates to Judaism. Over at the banana stand, Maeby encourages George Michael to take a day off since Annyong is there. He agrees and goes over to the offices to eat lunch with his dad.

Without Lupe or her family at the penthouse, Lucille is helpless, unable to unload groceries. Gob, sick of working at the site, lets slip that he and the rest of the Bluth clan had been previously getting checks for nothing while they're not sure if the employees are going to get paid. Buster, incompetent but happy, resents this attitude and tries to fight him. The construction boss says they have settle in the traditional manner - playing bulldozer chicken while the rest of the employees on the site stop working.

Lindsay, trying to deal with the worker strike, leaves George Michael at her desk and manages to pick up Lupe's stranded family with the staircar to go out to the site as scab labor.

This goes over not well at all on the site, as the workers despise being replaced and Lupe's family is ashast that they were assumed to be day labor. Michael shows up to resolve the situation and thanks to the picnic supplies provided by Lupe's group, a party breaks out. Meanwhile, there's a group of Bluth employees wandering around a picnic site...

Original Air Date: 2004-03-14
Season: 1