The argument was "At my job (and most jobs, I would think), if you check in any superfluous code, you’re going to be seen as a bad coder. Regressions are real and are highly embarrassing to both the company and you."

That is a bad argument in this case, because a regression in an internal tool is not going to be "highly embarrassing to both the company and you."

This was not a "regression" in any sense.

I welcome any other argument on this topic. But the argument presented had a flaw that I was pointing out.