During install, you get asked what TZ you're in. I, being silly, actually put in local timezone. HW clock is set at UTC/GMT, but that gets translated to local-tz by the system.
I did not think about per-user TZ settings existing, because it's not something I've had to consider at a sys level before.

That being said: Yes, that works (now that I knew to try it) in this specific case. Seems like a bit of a hack tho.