How many more tricks will you have to employ after you get past HR to get through the job itself? Let alone have some fun and learn something new.
To that point, oftentimes bad HR is really just a scale issue. A company starts getting more resumes than its people can deal with, and so it hires HR drones just to help with the workload. And this continues. Eventually, the managers are so far removed from the day-to-day HR filter that they don't really notice how bad it's become.
It might not be an exact science, but it reflects somewhat on existing and future recruits, not to mention an indicator of corporate bureaucracy.