I hate Corporate Rewards

I hate corporate rewards. Phew! I finally got it off my chest! Its pointless at best. I just do not see the need for an awards ritual where an employee is awarded for 'good performance' and other such half a dozen categories in an organization that is mid sized.
The perceived benefits of rewards are
i. Employee motivation
ii. Recognition


Personally, a reward is the last thing I need to motivate myself. What is needed is faith and belief of the customer and encouragement from your manager and sound support of your team that stands by you every step.
An award is not going to compensate for any of the above.

Recognition
An employee is recognized as a star performer through appraisals that directly result in promotions and other monetary benefits. Nothing is more satisfactory than this. A quiet appraisal of performance with positive inputs to improvement go longer than a piece of plastic or metal donning my shelf. Recognition by senior management is another myth. These rewards ceremonies are conducted each quarter or even each month that its become pointless to reward the same person each time for the best performance. Eventually the system becomes a round robin and everyone knows that this is just a placebo and just don't care anymore.
Senior management recognizing the employee by virtue of having won an award from their own hands is also a bit far fetched. When it comes to business, word of mouth and trust plays a far more significant role than, again, the number of plastics that I have won!

Truly star performers do not seek nor do they benefit from limelight.
EDIT: Pursuant to this post, I received a call from a relative that he won an all India award for excellence in performance and he was one of the three to have won the award! Well, thats awesome! Thats recognition and it gets all the ticks in my above checklist. However, compare this with typical IT projects where each team of 5 or 50 gets to award a person for excellence every quarter or month!! Now the latter is what I hate!