Interesting inconsistency with list/record fields

As we've been implementing additional scripts, I noticed an interesting inconsitency with what information gets returned from a list/record field.

If it's a built-in field, SuiteScript will return an internalID.  If it's a custom field, however, Netsuite returns the text value.  For example, we have a custom field, type list/record, subtype employee (to keep track of the project manager on a job record).  Using SuiteScript, Netsuite will return the full name as the value, rather than a reference to the employee record.  For the Sales Rep field, however, it returns the internalID. 

Weird. 

Ideally, there should be a way to get either the text value, as displayed on screen, or the internalID.  Obviously, if you have the internalID, you can get at the text value eventually, but if you only have the text value, as far as I can tell, ou're stuck hardcoding references (ugly)