You remember the interviews with HR? Those wanting to "know you better"... which what you told them ending being used as a leverage to push you hard to leave by yourself?
How does this relate to your situation? And why have you been unemployed for a decade? Most of the time, interaction with HR is super minimal, so I don’t see how this would prevent you from being employed anywhere.
The HR people were comically evil and it was a useful learning experience. Those guys would burn the building down to “beat” the union over some bullshit issue.
Without a contract and a counter-party they usually deploy a more banal evil that feels more like incompetence. But when the chips are down, they’ll gleefully bone you.