COO

There is, in fact, less satisfaction than one would imagine in being "let down easy" by the COO.

Let me back up a little.  The CEO is the boss.  It's a serious sounding title that conveys power and control.  When, in actuality, many CEO's are merely figure heads.  Boardroom puppets.  Stuffed suits.  The CEO of my company is a really cool guy who should be admired by all the pretend-faker CEO's out there who love to parade around like corporate peacocks and squawk quotes suited for inspirational breakroom posters featuring kittens or sunrises or the like.
And the CEO of the company I work for, is also smart enough to allow the COO of the company I work for, to actually operate the company.
It's the COO who really calls the shots.  Everybody knows that.  You'd probably rather play golf with the CEO. But it's the COO that you desperately want to impress.

And a couple of weeks ago the COO interviewed me for a promotion.  A promotion that I ultimately did not get.  And she sent me an email at 4:55 on Friday afternoon, asking me to join her in her office...where she delivered the crushing blow.
My cubicle is just 50 yards from her office.  Which was just enough distance for me to work up a recovery scenario as I walked proudly toward her corner of the office suite.  I smiled at the faces of the perimeter cubiclites as they watched me strut by.  They all knew.  But the folks I work with are respectful and they were sincerely empathetic to my plight.  As I passed each cubicle I expected the possibility of smug, unkind grins as they shuffled papers and rearranged office supplies on their desks, trying to look busy the last few minutes of the week.  All of them wearing coats, their lunch boxes and purses ready to go.  Or maybe they'd rattle tin cups up against the bars of their cells, catcalling, using mirrors to catch a glimpse of my deadman walk.  But they all ignored me.  Either they are all nice people.  Or they're just as consumed with their own disappointment as I was with the dismantling I was about to experience.

The COO would have made a job offer to the winning candidate on Wednesday or Thursday; and then made sure the offer was accepted before letting the losers know.  She would not be calling me to her office with five minutes left in the work week to give me good news....she is a decent person.  She was beckoning me at the 11th hour so that I didn't have to squirm all weekend long wondering about the result of the decision that she would have surely known that I am smart enough to have already surmised.

So I thought to myself, "COO....that's a funny sounding title".