Faking Enthusiasm At Work? Why 87% Of Employees Put On An ‘Everything’s Great!’ Face

In most workplaces, “How’s it going?” has one acceptable answer, and it sounds a lot like “great, thanks!” A new survey of 1,002 workers around the world finds that answer is often an act.

Career-tools company Kickresume set out to learn whether people hate their jobs. Most don’t. What turned up instead was a lot of performing. In the week before they took the survey, 86% of respondents said they had acted more enthusiastic about their work than they actually felt at least once, and 11% said they did it constantly. Asked who they put on an “everything’s great!” face for, only 13% said no one, because they’re genuinely happy at work. Kickresume counts the remaining 87% as keeping up appearances for someone, whether a boss, a client, coworkers or themselves.

Faking it isn’t limited to miserable employees. Among people who gave their job a perfect 5 out of 5, 80% still faked enthusiasm at least once that week. And workers who are unhappy tend to keep it to themselves: 37% of those who dislike their job haven’t told a single person at work. For managers, that adds up to an office that can look upbeat while a good share of the staff feels otherwise.

Inside the survey on faking enthusiasm at work

Kickresume, which sells AI-based resume, cover letter and job-search tools, ran the anonymous online survey in September and October 2026. All 1,002 respondents were reached through the company’s internal database. Kickresume doesn’t say who is in that database, but if it is made up largely of people who have used a resume service, they may be more likely than the average worker to be thinking about a new job.

Men made up 65% of the group, and about one in five respondents worked in technology, IT or software. Millennials aged 30 to 45 accounted for nearly half the sample, followed by Gen Z (26%) and Gen X (23%). Respondents came from across the globe: 26% lived in Europe, with Asia and the United States at 23% each. Because the survey drew from one company’s internal contact list and not a random sample of the workforce, its percentages describe these respondents, not all workers everywhere.

Workers first rated how they feel about their jobs on a five-point scale running from “hate it” to “love it.” Outright hatred was uncommon. Just 12% said they hate their job and 15% said they dislike it, while 35% said they like or love it. At 38%, the single biggest group picked the neutral middle. Discontent ran highest in sales and retail (38% disliked their jobs), finance and banking (35%), and marketing, advertising and PR (33%). It was lowest in education (20%) and in creative, design and media work (18%).

Workers were more likely to feel proud than happy. About half of respondents (51%) said they’re proud to tell people where they work, and that included a quarter of those who dislike their job.

Faking enthusiasm at work, and who the show is for

When asked who the act is mainly for, the most common answer was “everyone equally” (28%). Clients or customers came next at 18%, followed by the boss at 16% and coworkers at 13%. Another 13% said the main audience is themselves.

U.S. respondents reported the most acting. Among them, 45% said they acted more enthusiastic than they felt on most days or constantly, compared with 35% in Asia and 30% in Europe. Europeans were also the most likely to say they never fake it (19%). Each of those regional figures rests on only a few hundred people; the U.S. group, for example, works out to roughly 230 respondents.

Unhappy workers who do speak up mostly confide in peers. Among those who dislike their job, 36% have told coworkers and 15% have told multiple people, while only 9% have told their boss. Women were much less likely than men to go to the boss: 3% had, compared with 12% of men.

“The workers most likely to leave are often the ones who’ve stopped telling you anything,” said Peter Duris, Kickresume’s CEO.

Dread, job hunting and the paycheck holding workers in place

Plenty of respondents start the workday with a knot in their stomach. Forty-three percent said they feel a sense of dread before a workday at least a few times a week, and 16% feel it before every single one. Gen Z respondents, aged 18 to 29, reported it most often (51% at least a few times a week). Liking the job offered limited protection, since 23% of people who like their work still dread it that often.

Many are also eyeing the exit. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) had seriously considered leaving their job in the past six months, including 42% of those who like it. And 82% said they had done at least one job-search task while at work. Updating a CV or LinkedIn profile was the most common (55%), 44% had applied for a job, and 26% had taken an interview call on the clock. Searching didn’t always signal a crisis: 68% of people who hadn’t considered leaving still did some job hunting at work. Since the pool was recruited by a resume company, these job-search numbers may run higher than they would in the general workforce.

Money explains much of the push and pull. Pay and benefits topped the list of reasons to stay (25%), and pay also topped the list of reasons to leave (24%). Only 7% said they stay for fulfillment. Workers who dislike their job told a different story about leaving: a bad manager or leadership was their leading reason (21%), ahead of pay (16%). Women were more likely than men to name workload or burnout as their main reason to go, 15% versus 9%.

A handful of write-in answers were more specific than any checkbox. “Company is so far behind the times. I still manually key 2000 hours weekly from paper time cards,” one respondent wrote.

To gauge how much of work comes down to the paycheck, Kickresume also asked whether people would keep their job if they won enough money to never work again. Forty-five percent would quit, 34% would stay on fewer hours, and 21% would keep the job exactly as it is. Even among people who rated their job a perfect 5, fewer than half (48%) would keep it unchanged. By region, 55% of Europeans and 53% of Americans said they would quit, compared with 31% of respondents in Asia.

Gen X and the six faces of the modern workforce

Kickresume sorted respondents into six overlapping types based on their answers. Performers, who faked enthusiasm most days or constantly, made up the largest share at 37%, and half of them dread work at least a few times a week. Next came the Undercover Job Hunter (26%), who rates the job a 4 or 5 but has job hunted at work anyway, and the Stuck (20%), whose top reason for staying is that nothing better has turned up, the second most common reason to stay after pay. Silent Sufferers, who dislike their job and haven’t told anyone at work, made up 10%. Two more types match groups already described: Daily Dreaders, who dread every workday, and the Genuinely Happy, who don’t put on a face at all. Because one person can fit several types, the shares add up to more than 100%.

By generation, Gen X workers aged 46 to 61 (about 230 respondents) looked the most worn down. They were the most likely to dislike their job (34%, compared with 26% of Millennials and 22% of Gen Z), to say they would quit if money allowed (53%), and to say they stay only because they can’t find anything better (29%). Among Gen Xers who dislike their job, 44% haven’t told anyone at work. Kickresume describes the generation as “often stuck between rising costs and a job market that doesn’t always reward older candidates,” though the survey itself didn’t measure either factor. Gen Z, by contrast, was the most likely to keep its job if money weren’t an issue (30%) and the most likely to stay for career growth (16%).

Most of these workers don’t hate their jobs, and that is exactly what makes them hard to read. An employee who rates the job a 3, smiles through every meeting and updates a LinkedIn profile on company time looks, from the manager’s chair, like someone who is doing fine. By this survey’s numbers, an upbeat office is a poor gauge of who plans to stay.

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