I've been programming and designing databases of various sorts for several years. And I've been on teams who have designed databases. Whenever we needed to have a lookup table for something, we would always create a lookup table for whatever. For example, let's say we wanted to have a lookup table for the states of the United States. We'd create a lookup table for that, with maybe a CHAR(2) for the key and then a VARCHAR(50) for the full name of the table. That's the idea I'm trying to convey.
At my current job my boss doesn't like doing that at all. Instead what he does is creates one, huge and wide (as in many columns) lookup table. Then he puts everything into it. For me, this is difficult because when I want to find something I've got to try and remember whatever special value in one or two columns it is that lets me know what other column has the value for the key (not the primarily key, but the designation that you'd use like 2 characters for a state abbreviation) and where the other column is for the full name, etc.
However, I'm wondering, perhaps its just me. In the past I've worked for smaller IT shops, with at most 5 people. Now I work for a large agency with over 200 IT people. Is this the way that larger organizations design their databases?
I agree with the others. It's a really bad idea that most consider to be an absolute worst practice. The problem is that it's your boss doing it and he doesn't appear to be in the listen'n'learn mode on this one especially since it's his baby. The best you could do is to setup a test that proves that it's a huge mistake. Without such a test, he's not going to listen.