The HR people in my company help me all the time. It's a shame that so many workplaces are so adversarial.

It depends on what you want, maybe they help you in some cases because it costs nothing, or doing so does not touch a "live wire" of corporate policy or government regulation.

But for other matters, HR does pursue their own agenda, not yours. It's important to remember.

When I worked in retail my name and zip code was incorrect in the company records. When I asked who I should contact to fix this, my store manager told me I'd need to contact HR but to never ever do that. I'll always wonder what would've happened if I had contacted them.

Then to be perfectly honest they are bad at their jobs. The purpose of HR is to protect a company (which in practice means, its senior managers) from the employees.

No, the purpose of HR is to manage one of the company's most valuable assets. Acting adversarially is a great way of driving away the most valuable assets.

Resources, not assets.

Bad at their jobs, that's rich. There are a lot of times when I am reminded to be glad that I work where I do; this is one of them.