You have to remember that the -p option was added in 2001 and was very likely requested by someone who wanted it to work in this particular way. While it may not work the way you want or expect, that does not necessarily mean that it is a bug :-) With a feature that is this old, changing it would probably cause all existing scripts to break in some way, so it is very unlikely that I would change how it works after ten years. If you would like a new /timer behaviour, it would be best to post a suggestion in the feature suggestions forum.
