department, so the best you could do was speak directly to your supervisor, or, if he or she was the problem, the plant manager. Our plant manager the first handful of years I was there thought he was so far above the rest of us that our "petty little problems" weren't his problem. The one after him, who remained the plant manager for the rest of my time there, hated conflict and generally advised us to "work it out amongst yourselves".
At my last place, HR would listen, nod sympathetically and make empty promises along the lines of "we'll look into that". While I was there, we lost the head of our HR department; the people hired for HR after that never had any idea what to do and would generally say either "I'll talk to so-and-so" or else say whatever made the company either look good or at least look unblameable.
