Oh yeah, HR is ridiculous. For example at my company, if your appraisal says you "meet expectations" that's not good enough; you are expected to exceed expectations. The paradox of this obviously eludes whoever is responsible for it.
At appraisal time, you pick 3 cow-orkers to give you "feedback". Everyone stitches this up with their mates; if you tried to be honest - because no-one's perfect - you'd effectively be punished by having the lowest score of your peers!
Survey feedback can easily drift upwards: as a few people start scoring 'great' more often than necessary, everyone else needs to start scoring average workers as great to ensure they aren't left behind. Eventually anything less than perfection indicates total failure.