Is it a paid or during work hours?
"If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip"
This future CEO is absolutely not interested in paying people for this.
I realize it changes based on scale, but the Director for my group has periodic get-togethers for our ~19 person IT team. It's only for a few hours, takes place at stereotypical "corporate event" places (think Dave & Busters, etc), is during work hours, and food is provided. It's "requested attendance", meaning if a remote employee can't make it or someone has something going on, it's no biggie. There's some minor talk like company news/discussion, who got promoted, etc but mostly it's just intended as a thank you to the entire team for our hard work. He even gives out small gifts to us, though that's certainly not necessary! It's also 100% paid for hourly associates. My company is far from perfect, but that's the way to do it.
I think it's actually insane to require people to go to an unpaid "recreational" event on their own time. I don't even think it's okay to politely ask, with no penalty!
No, it shows up as a downloaded book, no browser required! Well, you have to be connected to Wi-Fi (or have the mobile version) to "Whispersync" initially, but once it's on there, you can read it offline, delete it, send it to the cloud, etc. It does open the browser if you want to archive or favorite it to your Pocket account, but you could do that when you have service again, or just not use that functionality...