Am I Getting In Trouble?

Question

Hi! Building sub, paid hourly. I started mid-year and had to use a lot of my PTO at the beginning because of appointments I had scheduled with my previous job's schedule in mind. I now am out of PTO, which is fine because I rarely get sick.

Friday morning, around 3am, I woke up with terrible food poisoning. I have other medical issues, so I just hoped and prayed that it would go away by the morning. It did not. However, I didn't have a sub assignment in the morning, so I decided to tough it out and try to get through the school day. That lasted about 10 minutes. After I was...occupied...for about 40 minutes, I went to my principal and explained the situation to her (including how I am out of PTO). I told her I was more than willing to take unpaid time off for the day, but it was not going to be feasible for me to teach at any point that day. She told me that I would have to contact HR and see if they would approve my unpaid time off (sidenote: UTO is terribly difficult to get approved in my district).

I emailed all three members of the HR department at 8:56am. I stayed in my office otherwise, except to use the bathroom. This did mean I did not complete my lunch duties, mostly because I knew if I was around the smell of food, I was going to get sick again. So the rest of the day, I was either in the bathroom or in my office. I tried to keep occupied with cleaning up my Google Drive and reading material provided to me so that I was still "working". I finally received a reply from HR approving my time off at 1:52pm. We dismiss at 2:50pm. I replied to HR, telling them that I had stayed at school the whole day (until their email came in, because I did leave as soon as I got that email saying I could go) and they replied that they were under the impression from speaking with my principal that I had been gone all day. I confirmed that I did indeed stay all day, but that I had kept to myself to avoid being around anyone while sick (not contagious I know, but more to avoid any possibly embarrassing incidents).

My principal replied to the email chain saying that she did not see me the rest of the day and that I hadn't subbed in the class I was originally scheduled to in the afternoon. For the record, I had discussed this with my principal as well in the morning after she told me to reach out to HR, but I received an email at 9:02am saying my sub job had been cancelled, so I thought either she was being proactive in trying to find a new sub and/or trying to be kind in not having me in an assignment for that day.

All of this to say, I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble for not doing work while I was at work. From my initial conversation with Principal, I was under the impression that I could not leave work until I received confirmation from HR, which is why I didn't leave until I received their reply. Am I going to be reprimanded for this? I'm seriously considering not returning next year, due to a number of reasons, but I'm still scared of not being able to go out on my terms. I hope this makes sense - any advice is appreciated. TIA

Posted Apr 6, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

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