Where did you get "verbal abuse" from? We're talking about competition, so a far closer analogy would be an NBA player having to play a a game against one of their friends. Should they not have to do that in exchange for their salary?

What’s the analogy here exactly? Non-coordinated competition is akin to verbal abuse?

Isn’t there a much more obvious NBA analogy here, which would actually make the CEO-empathy pleas appear even more ridiculous?

Were you attempting the move “X=Bad to me, Y=Bad to you, Bad=Bad, therefore X=Y”?