Metaphorically

I'm going to engage in a bit of wordplay today...

I work in an institution where the definition of "beyond the call of duty" is defined as "performing a task that is usually well out of your area of expertise ignoring risk to property damage or grossly inefficient use of employee time using reasons like 'the higher-ups need it', 'we need to impress our visitors', or 'you seem to always have an idea how to solve things so you do it'."

Let's break that down. The phrase originates from the military, where terms like "call of duty" or "duty calls" refers to something ranging from unpleasant (e.g., patrolling at unholy hours) to dangerous (e.g., going to war), but has to be done because they were trained to do it and they took an oath to do it even if it meant death.

Mixing "beyond" in that phrase obviously refers to doing more than what is usually expected. It can be in quantity (e.g., doing extra hours on patrol) or quality (e.g., improvising a contraption so it can take one away from a dangerous situation or save lives). In any case, the key is doing something that surpasses the requirements considerably.

Going back to my office, this phrase seems a far cry from the original context. It has been continuously abused to bring glory to one's self for something they thought was not part of their job because it was not listed in their job description or somebody else in the organization has started doing a huge bulk of it and they "led that effort".

I'm not impressed though. Things change. Therefore, doing something in the same manner for the next decade isn't going to get one anywhere. It's going to be a matter of adapting to these changes and integrating them into one's mindset. So when crunch time comes and things require going beyond the call of duty, I think it'll be pretty clear who's going out into the field and who gets left to guard base camp.