A tech company's corporate retreat in Honduras turned into a disaster, with food poisoning, extreme heat, dangerous challenges, and resort failures.
If you've ever been on a corporate retreat , you know they can go various ways. Sometimes it's a nice break from work, and sometimes it's just a bunch of awkward team-building exercises you'd rather skip.
And every once in a while, they can be so bad that everyone gets mad because it was a complete waste of time, and they would rather have been at work.Well, whether you've been on one or not, this corporate retreat by tech company, Plex, really takes the cake for how quickly things can go off the rails — and then somehow keep getting worse.recently by the Wall Street Journal and was told by six employees who, for lack of a better word, survived the whole ordeal. The story feels especially timely, since, as the WSJ reminds us, the current season ofis about a corporate retreat gone wrong.According to the WSJ, this all happened back in 2017, when senior executives at Plex spent roughly $500,000 on a big corporate retreat in Honduras for about 120 remote employees, through Moniker Partners, a company that specializes in setting up corporate retreats. The idea was simple: Mix work, team bonding, and fun in a tropical setting. They even built the trip around a-style theme with games and challenges.youtube.com Now that sounds like fun, right? Well, there were red flags before anyone got there. The founder of Moniker Partners, Sean Hoff, said that about three weeks before they arrived in Honduras, the resort's general manager emailed him to say he had left, adding,"I wish you the best with your retreat." Three days later, Hoff got an email saying the head chef had also quit.The CEO of Plex, Keith Valory, arrived in Honduras the day before the employees did. Valory, who is a bigfan, was going to be the"Jeff Probst" host of the retreat. While he was warned NOT to eat the vegetables, he said he felt like,"I've got to have a salad. Just one little salad," and did so anyway. After eating a salad, he got E. coli, and realized he was sick just as the employees were arriving. He was so sick that a doctor had to come and put him on an IV that they nailed to the bedpost. According to Valory, he would end up losing 8 to 10 pounds.Plex co-founder and CPO, Scott Olechowski, ended up taking on the"Jeff Probst" role, which included hosting the openingchallenge on the first night, in which teams had to open a platter and eat whatever was on it. For Shawn Eldridge, who was the head of business development and content, it ended up being a dead tarantula, which his team looked on in disgust as he ate it, saying of it:"I just grabbed it and did it. Pretty horrible, not going to lie. Those hairs."In another team bonding challenge, the company hired a former Navy SEAL in order to"pump the team up." Valory, who was ill in his room, could hear the yelling coming from the former Navy SEAL as he ordered the employees to perform physically demanding drills and told the WSJ that hiring him was one of their biggest mistakes.youtube.com The former Navy SEAL had the employees doing Army crawls on the beach in 100-degree weather. According to Olechowski, it was so hot people were getting heat exhaustion, saying,"We get up there and it's hot and humid and people are passing out. I don't think he'd ever seen quite such an unfit group."youtube.com The drills moved from the beach to a golf course, where the instructor had everyone hit the grass. One employee, Greta Schlender, ended up sitting on a fire ant hill. She was wearing shorts and immediately got a bunch of bites and broke out in hives. The only thing the resort could treat her with was an antihistamine shot. The fire ants weren't even the worst thing on the golf course, as someone saw an alligator there, too.challenges and drills were bad, the resort wasn't much better. Understaffed and not used to attending so many guests, they rushed out food to the buffet, which caused Olechowski to instruct his employees to cut the chicken and beef in half and inspect them before eating"because it was coming out uncooked."The resort's water and electricity were unreliable, cutting out again and again in the middle of a brutal heat wave. Hoff, who ran the company organizing the retreat, ended up going room to room, handing out water bottles to employees, trying to keep everyone okay. The constant stress and dehydration caught up with him, and after he started having heart palpitations, an ambulance had to be called, and he was hooked up to an ECG machine.There was also a pest issue, including sand fleas that, while they fumigated for them daily, still bit people during a beach dinner. And then there was a porcupine that crashed through the ceiling of one of the senior software engineer's rooms while he was sleeping. He awoke to find it in his shower.Though the entire retreat was a disaster straight out of a movie, it was a success in terms of team bonding, and people ultimately had a good time. With Olechowski saying of the whole thing,"There are probably hundreds of little inside jokes that came from that retreat."
Corporate Retreat Plex Honduras Team Building Disaster
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