I'm using a gitlab pipeline for Kubernetes deployment. One of my gitlab cleanup stages contains a delayed job, so it has this within the stage:

when: delayed
start_in: 6 hours

I am aware of the documentation that this stage will block my pipeline. Therefore, this stage would prevent my user to merge in their branch to master as the pipeline is incomplete and waiting around for 6 hours.

I need to be able to allow the user to merge in their branch while also leaving the cleanup stage to wipe out other branches in the case where users leave behind a branch for more than 6 hours.

Any workarounds that anyone can think of?