[rorykoehler]

I don't disagree with you on the type issue but you can see in a large organisation how this would easily fall through the cracks. It's also entirely plausible that an intern came up with the sms notification idea and it wasn't caught in code review. I don't really subscribe to Hanlon's razor but in this context I can understand how it could happen quite easily.

[koliber]

This is a type of error that is often found in code and data modeling. I haven't come across a name for it yet. It most definitely can and does fall through the cracks, in small, medium, and large organizations. It is a code smell and should be eliminated whenever it starts happening. However, it is often quite subtle, and a developer's ego is often stronger than the explanation for why it should not be done that way.

I shall dub it "Krystian's Overoptimistic Denormalization Error", or KODE for short.