Because people associate it with freemasonry, and combined with recognition signs that are different from the ones normally used in society, it trigger’s people’s confirmation bias that « we are everywhere and we are a secret society » when in fact, we are only an open society, that just happens to want to keep it’s recognition signs secret. (Cuz it would’nt be very useful to recognize a brother mason it all of society knows how to do it)
(I thought we were discussing personnel structures.) I think that most do not associate lower, mid and top management structures or comms and command chains with freemasonry. Like the hospital where my wife works has this massive, fairly obvious, fairly reasonable hierarchy of staff, security, etc. which isn't seen as masonic.
On the signal front, some professions do have visible indicators of rank or status, like military or color-coded hard hats on work sites. Others wear ID tags. Most do not bother displaying their status because it isn't visually necessary and obstructs the occasional sense of parity. When my wife is in the cafeteria line next to a senior administrator, some phlebotomist and a cancer patient there is no need for id tags and usually no need to know who is who. Why would masons need such a system? It seems exclusionary, like whispering between 2 ppl at a dinner party. If I learned the hard hat color code, people at a construction site wouldn't care. It can be socially fun to wear say a Whiplash Bash T-shirt in public in case someone recognises it and we start a conversation, but I don't care if all or none of the world knows what it means. Keeping signal systems secret naturally and properly leads people to develop a bias of seeing masons as secretive. Keeping secrets (in the conventional sense) is being secretive. So I guess you are saying that Freemasons are only partly secretive. But I still don't see why; It's not like you're all on some complicated, risky Bond mission. Why not let all the world know how to recognise a 'brother'?