HR is never your friend, they are the enemy.
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.
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.