Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty looked like the kid outside the principal’s office as he waited on a City Hall bench to speak to mayoral aides Thursday — summoned there a day after his boss’s embarrassing Upper East Side plowing “mayor culpa.”

“I don’t know what the real problem was — the problem was it snowed,’ a testy Doherty said afterward of the slippery snow that continued to blanket the neighborhood throughout much of Wednesday.

“Various people,” he said, evasively, when asked who he was meeting with. “I think you have to rely on the mayor’s comments — I think we can leave it at that,” he said.

The cowed-looking plower-in-chief wouldn’t say if the mayor was disappointed in him.

“I think the mayor said it was disappointing in his comments and he had us look at the district again and work at it … it was a storm. We have to move forward.”