Whilst surface acting at work is wildly disingenuous behaviour (along the lines of gossiping wildly at work) and tedious for colleagues to deal with, it shows a coherent level of brainwashing that aligns perfectly with capitalist delusions.

The more your employees surface act, the more robotic in their actions they become in their evolution from human beings towards remorseless profit generating machines.

It’s your duty of care as an employer to encourage your staff members to engage in surface acting, thus ensuring everything they say is an act that may also eventually lead to them bagging a gong at the annual Surface Acting Awards (SAA) in Skegness.

Surface Acting Laws and Faking it Until They Make it

The Surface Acting (Disingenuous) at Work Act 1974 regulates this matter. It’s complemented by The Burnout at Work Act 1974 and The Acting at Work Act 1974.

Together they form to create one giant Super Act referred to in hushed circles as The Faking it at Work Act (Eternity).

All the Acts essentially state:

• Falsities at work are great.
• Employees shouldn’t be themselves as that’s the route to unprofessionalism (personality MUST NOT be cultivated in the workplace).
• Toxic working environments thrive when everyone is surface acting their way towards a self-absorbed career status that loftily hovers just beyond the realms of reality.

As such, it’s good business practice to encourage employees to surface act their way through their time with your organisation.

Classic signs an employee is kowtowing to these expectations include:

• Talking complete and utter corporate bollocks.
• Faking positive emotions (e.g. smirking at anyone and everyone in the office, even that weirdo Jeff from accounts).
• Hiding negative emotions (stress is for wimps and any feelings of anger can always be unleashed later by lashing out at family members or friends).
• Always being a bit “off“, as if they’re existing in a capitalistic bubble of feigning professionalism so as to further personal goals, whilst inwardly harbouring psychotic deviations you hope to God you’re never on the receiving end of.

Fundamentally, surface acting at work is bullshitting (faking it until they make it). And that is fabulous. Good business deals on hiding the truth from prying eyes.

When staff put a brave face on it in the vague hope an employer will see their actions as something other than mildly disturbing and casual duplicity, you can rest assured you’ve got a surface actor on your hands!

String them along with false promises and you can be rewarded by watching this person slowly driving his or herself insane.

How to Provide Surface Acting Lessons at Work

Surface acting is emotion-regulation and, in the long-term, this suppressive behaviour can lead to some seriously negative cognitive issues. Not least burnout!

Employees adopting this act off disingenuous professionalism run the risk of cognitive exhaustion and coming across as a bit weird with their colleagues.

To encourage such behaviour, you can operate a pro-surface acting policy and explain, in your company handbook, you’re ready and willing to fund acting lessons so members of staff can learn how to bury emotions.

You can also recommend films for eager employees to watch, such as horror classic The Exorcist (1973) that has a memorable scene of two priests working together in harmony to dispel a demon (use this as a case study for how NOT to surface act).

In time, they’ll perfect not showing the emotions they would otherwise display. And they can pretend their way through working life.

This level of near psychotic delusion will be superb for you as an employer, as you can refuse their later requests for a promotion (or just sack them) and watch them grin and bear this earth shattering news as if they’ve just won the National Lottery.

Nominating Employees for The Annual Surface Acting Awards (SAA)

To further incentivise bizarre behaviour in your workplace, you can enter your very best surface acting employees into the UK’s annual Surface Acting Awards (SAA).

Each ceremony has 30 awards available for outstanding professional commitment to bullshitting. Including gongs such as:

• Best Surface Actor of the Year
• Best Supporting Surface Actor of the Year
• Best Disingenuous Smirk
• Best Smirk
• Best Stupidest Thing Asked to an Interviewee During an Interview
• Best Use of Toadying Behaviour for Personal Gain
• Best Use of Specious Reasoning in Order to Uphold Inane Company Policies
• Best Mental Breakdown Following Long-Term Surface Acting

The more awards your business wins, the more you’ll appeal to psychopaths and narcissists eager to work for your business where they can blend into the background and work their pernicious ways.

Do note, entry to the SAA is £500 per entrant and the employee in question must attend the award ceremony.

Should they win an award, you will shadow them on to the stage and the winner must then provide a rambling acceptance speech whilst a disingenuous smirk is affixed to their surface acting mug.