120 Employees Sent on “Survivor”-Themed Work Retreat That Fell Apart, from Eating Tarantulas to Army Crawling in 100-Degree Heat
120 Employees Sent on “Survivor”-Themed Work Retreat That Fell Apart, from Eating Tarantulas to Army Crawling in 100-Degree Heat
Sam GilletteTue, April 7, 2026 at 5:46 PM UTC
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Plex CEO Keith Valory.Credit: Linkedin -
A tech company sent 120 employees on a Survivor-inspired corporate retreat in Honduras in 2017
Nearly a decade later, staffers still vividly remember what it was like to eat dead tarantulas and get stranded on an island
“It was just such a calamity,” said Sean Hoff, the founder of Moniker Partners, which organized the trip
A tech company spent $500,000 on a corporate retreat in Honduras that was inspired by Survivor. While there, multiple mini-disasters ensued.
Almost a decade later, employees continue to remember the medical mishaps and what it was like to eat tarantulas and Army crawl on sand flea-filled beaches.
“You get really close bonds on these trips,” Keith Valory, the 54-year-old CEO of Plex, told The Wall Street Journal of the weeklong retreat he went on with 120 fully remote employees in 2017. “It’s like the life-sustaining force of the company.”
“It was just such a calamity,” added Sean Hoff, the 42-year-old founder of Moniker Partners, the agency that organized the trip.
By 2017, Valory had watched all of the episodes of Survivor with his wife and had even met the host of the popular reality show, Jeff Probst. The CEO and other executives of Plex, a free streaming platform, concocted the idea of the getaway retreat, which they dubbed “Plexcon.” Valory planned on playing host just like Probst, the paper reported.
The higher-ups intended for their employees to participate in team-building challenges and meetings during the day and save the night for some holiday fun.
Their vision soon began to crumble when they learned that both the general manager and head chef wouldn’t be at the hotel during their stay. On the Sunday morning that employees were set to arrive, Valory got an E. coli infection from eating a salad, “which is maybe the worst thing you could get, possibly, ever,” he told the WSJ.
“Just as people were arriving on the buses, I was like, 'Uh oh.' I lost 8 or 10 lbs.,” recalled Valory, who was replaced as host by Plex co-founder and Chief Product Officer Scott Olechowski, according to the outlet.
“They had a doctor come to me, which apparently is pretty standard,” he continued. “They nailed an IV bag to the bedpost.”
Plex and Moniker Partners did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for further comment.
The first Survivor-inspired contest involved teams eating whatever they found on covered platters. Shawn Eldridge, the 55-year-old head of business development and content for the company, had seen tarantulas in his home state of Texas, but he’d never eaten one before.
“My team was just like, ‘If you don’t want to do this, you are totally fine. We can take the loss.’ ” Eldridge told the paper. “I just grabbed it and did it. Pretty horrible, not going to lie. Those hairs.”
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Even as he was violently ill in his hotel room, Plex’s leader could tell that another task led by a former Navy SEAL wasn’t going well.
“As I’m in my room dying, I could hear them out there doing all their drills and yelling,” Valory told WSJ. “So I’m in here thinking, ‘This is terrible, but it sounds terrible out there, too.’ ”
The employees Army-crawled on the beach in 100-degree weather, with some struggling to complete the task.
“This is not a super fit group in general,” Olechowski told the paper.
Greta Schlender, a 41-year-old senior product manager for Plex, recalled getting bitten on her butt by fire ants after she landed on their sandy abode. She received an antihistamine shot in the rear, according to the WSJ. Other calamities included the electricity and water shutting off intermittently, plus golf cart incidents. One employee even found a porcupine in his room.
Despite the mishaps, the group wasn’t dissuaded from pursuing other activities. After a fun trip to a nearby island, the colleagues boarded planes at a small airport to fly back to the mainland. Two planes weren’t able to make the trip before dark descended, so they were stuck.
“I just said, ‘Guys, there’s nothing we can do. Let’s just make the most of it,’ ” Hoff told the paper. “We found some beach hotel and drank beers all night.”
Schlender rallied, despite her multiple fire ant bites.
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“We all got matching tank tops. We went and saw reggae. They flew us off the island at 6 a.m,” she told WSJ. "We got back to rounds of applause from our colleagues for surviving.”
Nine years later, Schlender described the retreat as "one of the most fun trips ever."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
