“You do realize, right, that HR departments work for management, not for the worker? No, they are not your friends.”
yep ... and i personally saw HR only do two positive things in my decades working for the GOCO;
1. a black employee quit kinda working, and ran off the rails with black chips on his shoulders, and started to make all kinds of racist accusations that were completely baseless ... the head of HR was black and because of that she was able to fire the black guy without legal repercussions at an institution that was otherwise almost impossible to fire anyone ...
2. one of my bosses was so toxic, people quit and cited chapter and verse of the toxicity during the exit interviews and others who stayed complained bitterly to HR about BS annual reviews that were nothing but vengeful stabs in the back, and because of that, the boss was eventually demoted to “special projects” with no direct reports ... HR naturally was only worried about possible lawsuits ...
Ah yes. Either 'promotion' to a position where the office is a broom closet with no direct reports, or 'special projects'. The sad part is, so much damage is done beforehand.
Hopefully the 'special projects' were of very short duration.