I think part of what they mean is that some retail managers seem utterly incapable of giving positive feedback in anyway except to sandwich a criticism. Like y

I think part of what they mean is that some retail managers seem utterly incapable of giving positive feedback in anyway except to sandwich a criticism. Like yes, it can stave off bad responses from volatile colleagues to sandwich bad feedback with good, but if that's the only place that positive feedback appears, then the listener learns pretty quick to just ignore the positive feedback. Its evidently disingenuous, and its deeply toxic to assume that "because you're working at McDonald's/Walmart/etc, you're not smart enough to pick up on that". Certainly, "thank you for making the fries" is poor thanks. But "I saw how you hustled to get the fries out during that rush, that made $other_employees jobs a lot easier. Thank you for that" is good. Too often, retail employees just get the "thanks" and not the "here's why I appreciate it".