Comment by arjie

Looking at examples of honorific usage:

"yes, officer"

"yes, doctor"

"yes, madam mayor"

"yes, senator"

These are all examples where we do use honorifics. And now for ones where we don't.

"yes, planner"

"yes, assessor"

"yes, child caseworker"

In all the cases, the institution should have integrity and we're not interacting with them as individuals but as agents of the institution. Certainly tax assessors should not be acting on their own personal beliefs but are merely mechanical agents of an impartial tax machine (as judges should be in their domain). However, in some it sounds ridiculous and in others it's natural. The existence of "yes, chef" (in a kitchen) or "yes, coach" (on a team) points to a more general reason: this is a way of expressing that the person with the title has some degree of social standing in the context we're interacting with them in.

There might be a more specific reason we can come up with that is specific to judges, but the general reason suffices to explain it.