Even if this is a joke, this is a great example of something that happens all the time: people avoiding responsibility by blaming some chunk of software. The electronic equivalent of "No, sir! I didn't kill that person. The butter knife did it!"

Fake, there's no way the sysadmin wouldn't throw the HR rep who signed the policy under the bus (without some CYA documentation prior).

The place I work at does something like this, and there was actually quite a bit of trouble when a second person with the same abbreviation joined. The responsible guy seriously suggested fireing the new guy because the policies didn't account for duplications.

That happened

Please believe me sounds like I don't know how to manually set emails. No way it cannot be done.