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US employee forced to eat dead tarantula during corporate retreat: ‘Pretty horrible’
Plex's 2017 corporate retreat in Honduras turned chaotic as flights were delayed, the CEO fell ill, and employees faced extreme challenges.
In 2017, American tech company Plex took 120 employees on a weeklong corporate retreat to Honduras. What followed was a series of unfortunate events that reads like the plot of a slapstick Hollywood comedy. Details of the wild, wild corporate retreat have emerged online almost a decade later — and they include everything from a CEO who got food poisoning to employees passing out from the heat to survival games that involved eating dead tarantulas.
Six employees of Plex spoke to the Wall Street Journal about what went down in Honduras in 2017.
Chaos at corporate retreat
Chaos began soon after 120 Plex employees landed in Honduras for what was supposed to be a fairly comfortable corporate retreat. First, Plex CEO Keith Valory contracted a severe case of E Coli and spent the entire week in his hotel room, hooked up to an IV.
(Also read: ‘There’s no other option’: Employee forced to work 20 extra unpaid hours weekly for promotion, faces health issues)
A former Navy SEAL ran Survivor-style team drills in the blazing heat, sending mostly unfit office workers crawling on beaches and sprinting through sand flea–infested terrain.
“One of our biggest mistakes was hiring a former Navy SEAL to pump the team up. As I’m in my room dying, I could hear them out there doing all their drills and yelling. So I’m in here thinking, This is terrible, but it sounds terrible out there, too,” CEO Keith Valory told WSJ.
Surviving the Survivor-themed retreat
Plex had imagined the retreat to be a corporate getaway in a tropical paradise, but with a Survivor theme. Survivor, for those who may not know, is a reality TV franchise where contestants are placed in an isolated location and must weather a series of challenges to win the prize money.
The idea was that Plex employees would take part in team challenges that were fun, but not too gruelling.
Instead, employees recalled having to crawl through flea-infested beaches in the blazing heat and having to eat delicacies like scorpions and tarantulas.
Scott Olechowski, chief product officer and Plex co-founder, said that the opening challenge was “a contest where people on their different teams open up a platter. You have to eat what’s on the platter.”
Eating a dead tarantula
Shawn Eldridge, head of business development and content at Plex, was unlucky enough to land a platter with a dead tarantula.
“You got something good, then not so good. It was escalating,” he explained. “When I opened up the cover, it was a dead tarantula.”
Shawn, a 55-year-old Texan, did not shy away from the challenge — even though his team members told him to quit. He described the taste as “pretty horrible”.
“I’m a Texan, so I’ve been around tarantulas my whole life, I knew what it was. Never eaten one. My team was just like, ‘If you don’t want to do this, you are totally fine. We can take the loss.’ I just grabbed it and did it. Pretty horrible, not going to lie. Those hairs,” he recalled.
A series of unfortunate events
By the end of the week, what was meant to be a fun-filled corporate retreat had turned into a comedy of errors. Flights were delayed, employees battled heat, sand fleas, and unexpected wildlife—including a porcupine in a shower—while surviving military-style drills and insect-laden platters.
Yet amid the chaos, the Plex team found humour and camaraderie in the absurdity. Nearly a decade later, employees still recall the stories with laughter, matching tank tops, and inside jokes, proving that even the most disastrous retreats can lead to lasting bonds.
