Positive feedback from one's job is nice, but does it ever become meaningless?

Every Friday we have a meeting at the end of the day before we go home. A common practice is for people to write “props” for each other…a small piece of paper put into a box with something positive you saw this person do, who it’s to, and who it’s from…To encourage this, our principal has little contests, e.g., whoever’s prop is pulled out first gets 2 hours leave, etc.

My gripe is this…whenever we have a contest like this, people write 30 props saying, “To such and such, for doing a great job.” Understand, they write the same thing for all 30 people. This cheapens the whole process and makes it meaningless to me. If you can’t point out something specific that person did during the week, you’re obviously just trying to win the contest, and keeping me there later while they read all 30 props…(Sorry, but this really yanks my chain!)