CXone Studio IF action failing to branch on ASSIGN value

I’m building a simple Studio script to route calls based on a custom attribute. The goal is to check if the agent is in our Central time zone office and route accordingly.

Here is the snippet I have:

ASSIGN local_time_offset = "-6"
IF local_time_offset == "-6" THEN
 SetDestination("CentralQueue")
ELSE
 SetDestination("DefaultQueue")
END IF

The script runs without errors in the editor. It hits the SetDestination("DefaultQueue") path every time though. I added a debug log right after the ASSIGN and the value is definitely there.

I tried changing the comparison to == and = but it still fails. Is there a specific data type issue with the ASSIGN action? I’m pulling this from a WFM adherence check so the value comes as a string.

The documentation isn’t clear on how IF handles string comparisons in Studio. Does it require quotes around the variable on the left side? Or is the ASSIGN creating an object instead of a primitive string?

Any help would be great. We’re trying to get this live before the morning shift starts.