Why doesn't "<"& exclude time values equal to

First post!

I am writing a workbook that will count the number of employees working during specific "windows" of time based on their shift start and end times.

Employees are NOT to be counted if their shift start time is within 30mins of the end of the window (the logic being that it's too late for them to start any new work within the window).

The COUNTIFS function works as designed, but it keeps including the employees who start at exactly the 30-minute mark before the window ends. I'm ready to pull my hair out because it looks correct on paper, but the count is still off! What do you think?

R9:R74 are employee start times. R5 is the scheduled end of a working window. V9 is a cell containing the value \"00:30\".

I have a column in HH:MM time format for viewing

I have a numbers-only equivalent column of time values. Neither have fixed the issue.