It's not about advertising that you've done something with the Carnations; it's that Kathleen or any patron with decent access to information resources could conceivably find things out. While it's POSSIBLE you could get away with/make job-related excuses for something, it would be a risk if patrons decide you rigged the game: could get explosive.
The problem is more prevelent if they caught you outright FVCKING one of the Carnations without Kathleen's explicit order, and that Carnation then does very well onstage.
I don't think it's "telling" what happened with Rose's affection (unless Rose gets off on being abused, in which case she would not have got much of that from me), although it's interesting that you went there, immediately.
I was nice to her, and *nice* to her, and NICE to her, and NICE TO HER, and FVCKING NICE TO HER FFS, and her affection stayed zero until I was nice to her in the p0rn video she had to make, when it suddenly jumped 2 points. WTF.
Unless she was looking to be abused by the MC idk what the problem was. I haven't done the walk through check so if she's masochistic that could explain the no-affection. Otherwise, idk . Maybe my game glitched.
The only one I could see any negative effect on affection was Veronica. Because she was so often verbally abusive to the MC, and tried to alpha dom him, I wasn't feelin' dat, so by the end of week 2, I only had 16 affection with her and that wasn't enough for me to give her comforting words when she got completely graped/destroyed in Kathy's petty and vindictive spider/strapon climax revenge-fest. I felt bad about not being able to comfort her after, because by that time she'd actually been acting less like a prick and became a more sympathetic character.
Actually, I WAS constantly killing my affection with KATHLEEN, because she's just such a sadistic psychopathic b1tch, and anything you do nice for the Carnations brings her down. I specifically did a couple of borderline things (like actually played w/"wrapped birthday gift" Harper instead of letting her down out of the straps) just to make sure MC didn't bottom out K's affection and maybe get a bad end game over (I don't know if that is a thing; haven't really poured through the walkthrough).