There's an interesting juxtaposition between the sort of person who wants to work in HR, and what HR is actually designed to be.

in my experience they are mostly there to run payroll and benefits and write office memos when company policies are changed.

I feel like a lot of people want HR to be the villain I guess because it's an easy target and they are the face of hiring/firing, though they don't really make the hire/fire decisions at all in most orgs.