Usernames with dots

[Seth Underwood <underwoo@xxxxxxxxx>]

At my work, all user names have a dot (usually First.Last).  This naming
convention causes the ~username shortcut to not work in zsh.  I found in
the zsh manual pages:

Static named directories
       A  `~'  followed  by anything not already covered consisting of any
number of alphanumeric
       characters or underscore (`_'), hyphen (`-'), or dot (`.') is looked
up as a named  direc‐
       tory,  and  replaced by the value of that named directory if found.

Is there a way in zsh to change this behavior?

Thanks,

-- 
Seth Underwood
underwoo@xxxxxxxxx