Read Time as String?

[granterogers]

When trying to load an excel file with a time (HH:MM:SS) columns, this is automatically reformatted into fractions of a year

e.g. 06:48:00 -> 0.283333

When using Read.CSV, one can specify StringAsFactors=F to ensure all columns are treated as string and remain unaltered... is there any such option we can use here?