Workflow timer step and on hold status

I read in the timer step knowledge base article, "The time a ticket spends on hold does not count against the timer's duration."

I wanted to create a question to confirm: If a ticket is in an on hold status class, a workflow timer step won't actually count down? That seems odd to me.

I'm trying to add a section to our computer request workflow that will wait a set period of time after we've notified the requestor that their computer is ready for pickup before prompting the technicians with a choice step to confirm whether an appointment has been scheduled. If yes, it moves on to another task. If no, then a reminder notification should go out to the requestor and then the timer step should reactivate, followed by the choice step for the technicians again, and so on. If we see that the appointment has been scheduled, then folks with the right permissions can skip an active timer step and move forward. 

The whole time, the ticket will be in our "ready for pickup" status which has an on hold status class. If the timer doesn't count down in this scenario, this design obviously isn't workable. Because this kind of scenario seems like exactly what the timer step would be for, I'm having a hard time understanding why it would be designed like that, but I might be missing the intended use case. 

Here's a screenshot of this small section of the workflow: 

Please confirm whether or not the timer step would tick down in this scenario. 

If there's some other way of organizing this that doesn't rely on a timer step, let me know. I know that tasks approvals and choice steps can now be configured to automatically send reminders now as of 11.9, but it feels silly to send a notification saying schedule an appointment and then send another email that says "did you schedule an appointment - Y/N" and keep sending the choice step reminder over and over since it wouldn't be able to include the link to our appointment calendar so it wouldn't be actionable. 

Please help!