Plot

George leaves several awkward messages on a girlfriend's answering machine, then decides to steal the tape.

After a pleasant first date with with Carol, she invites him up for coffee but George says no thanks - and only later realizes what she may have meant. He reluctantly decides to call her the next day but embarrasses himself even further by leaving a foolish message. He decides he has to get to her machine and retrieve the messages before she does. Jerry meanwhile goes on a date with Donna but they get into an argument when she says she likes a particular TV commercial that Jerry just hates.—garykmcd

George is excited when he finds that he and Jerry are having dates on the same night. Both of their dates go well up to the point that they have to say goodnight. George's date Carol (Tory Polone) asks George to come up to her place for some coffee, but George tells her that he can't drink coffee at night because it "keeps him up". Once she leaves his car, he realizes he made a mistake, as "coffee" is a euphemism for sex. Jerry's date Donna (Gretchen German) remarks that she likes a cotton Dockers commercial that Jerry absolutely hates, and with that ends his interest in her. Donna likes the fact that the men in the commercial are not talking about the pants, but Jerry specifically hates this as the men are talking about nothing. He believes real men do not behave like this.

Elaine tells George maybe coffee meant coffee and that George is overthinking this. She encourages George to call Carol. George decides to call Carol but gets her answering machine. He leaves her an extremely long, obnoxious message, and is concerned that she will think he is an idiot. George goes on about how he didn't realize that coffee didn't really man coffee on his message to Carol. He tries to sound casual and breezy, but across as needy, controlling and a little scary.

Jerry's friend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tells George how something similar happened to her brother-in-law, who took care of the problem by secretly switching the tape after waiting outside the apartment for the person to show up.

Jerry sees Donna again at his apartment. But that's when George barges in, while Jerry was in the bathroom. He talks to Donna and blurts out that she is the girl who likes the commercial. Donna is offended that Jerry discusses their private conversations with his friends. That's when Kramer walks in and recognizes Donna as the Cotton Dockers lady. Donna walks out on Jerry.

Jerry advises George to wait a few days for Carol to call back; George agrees but continues to leave increasingly angry - and eventually almost hostile - messages on her machine. When he discovers she was out of town, he decides to go through with the plan of changing the tape. Carol calls George and tells that she was in the Hamptons. She called at his office and said that she didn't know if he was trying to get in touch with her. Her machine broke and she has been using her old machine, and she doesn't have the beeper for it. So, she didn't get George's messages and they are sitting there waiting on her old answering machine. Carol wants to have dinner with George and will call him right after she gets home.

Frustrated by his inability to use an answering machine, George convinces Jerry to go with him. They decide to wait for Carol outside her apartment, and George will distract her while Jerry changes the tape. George tells Carol that he bumped into Jerry around the corner and that he needed to use his bathroom, since he has a phobia about public toilets. They succeed, but, just as they are about to leave Carol's apartment, she tells George that she had already heard the messages (Her neighbor called her and played her messages for her over the phone) and found them funny, adding that she "loves jokes like that."