[tezmc]

For your database example he'd be absolutely right to do so. Removal of inconsistencies is a detail that too many programmers think isn't important, but something as simple as a column name can cause all kinds of consequences down the line.

If it stayed in a programmer further down the line would have to spend a few moments trying to decide if s/he should be using customer_id or cust_id, might have to go into the database to double-check, might have to write additional code to handle special case tables with cust_id, all of which requires additional testing and adds to the amount of cruft code that needs to be maintained, whereas they could have just written generic code to consistently use customer_id in all cases.

It's like some sort of code butterfly effect.

Of course, if it was a manager who called me on Sunday who was incompetent or who had poor taste in visual or code design... well... then it would be a different story.