my dad once told me that in management training, would-be supervisors of millennials are instructed to offer repeated verbal affirmations that the millennial in question is doing a good job because otherwise our incredibly fragile egos (shored up by years of participation trophies, etc) would wither and die and then we’d be (gasp!) bad employees

anyway thanks dad, how the fuck is my anxiety-ridden ass supposed to differentiate between genuine praise and Corporate Best Practices