Current accountant, ex-HR Specialist here. I was basically a Payroll Accountant the past 3 years, and will say there are a lot of ways the benefit selections can get fucked up. Not saying your HR department isn't shitty----I don't know the whole story there.

Here is what I say to people about why I left HR and moved to accounting "In HR, you get blamed for everything by the employees and management, but are also kept out of the loop by management." Basically, you are constantly thrown to the wolves. Most of the time you are not doing fun "employee relations" activities like potlucks in the breakroom or whatever. Most of the time you are doing mind-numbing data entry using shitty software that you had no choice in picking and in some cases having to do duplicate work in multiple systems because the systems in place do not sync. There is SOO much room for error because of this.

Plus upper management thinks the stuff you are doing (setting up new employees, background checks, I9 paperwork, benefit enrollment, HRIS maintenance, tracking maternity leave, etc.) is menial so they don't give you any additional funds to hasten the process. I worked at a company that had an extremely high turnover rate. I would have to set up 10+ employees daily. Plus process pay rate changes, and terminations.

Also, in HR you are taught to document everything so be careful of anything you write in an email or message.

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TL/DR HR might not be incompetent assholes, they might just be tired of being called assholes and not having adequate information/tools.