Stephen Mihm, Columnist

Company Retreats Didn’t Use to Be This Crazy

May 9, 2026 at 12:01 PM UTC

Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance.”

Team-building has gone too far.
*Photo: 731; Martin Harvey/Getty Images;* *gece33/Getty Images; JosephBrewster/Getty Images*

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A very familiar feature of corporate life has crossed over into pop culture this year: the company retreat.

First came Prime Video’s Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, an elaborate hoax masquerading as a reality-television series about a fictional company known as Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce in March. And later this month, horror aficionados can savor Corporate Retreat, a movie featuring a homicidal CEO who takes team-building to a whole new level.