An MTA supervisor who was recently suspended for running a side business on state time spent part of his Monday workday on a meandering shopping break in which he parked in a crosswalk and asked The Post to report that he was at the office.

Gustavo Espinal strolled out of the NYC Transit Central Electronics Shop in Woodside around 10:27 a.m., got into his 2017 Mercedes GLE 350 and made the short drive to the CVS at Queens Boulevard and 41st Street.

“Do you have to put [in the story] that you talked to me in the store?” Espinal asked when a Post reporter approached him at the pharmacy counter, where he was in search of eyedrops.

“Yeah,” he confirmed when asked whether he meant that the story should claim that he was in his office for the chat.

Espinal left the CVS empty-handed and drove back to the 54th Street MTA facility, only to get back behind the wheel and head to a nearby Duane Reade without ever entering the office.

At the drug store, Espinal ditched his ride in a crosswalk along busy Roosevelt Avenue — his MTA badge in the windshield — then headed inside.

Espinal returned to work — eyedrops in hand — at 11:39 a.m. — 1 hour, 12 minutes after he left.

Along the way, Espinal explained how he’d struck a deal to avoid a 30-day unpaid suspension handed down earlier this month for fielding phone calls for his electronics repair business on the MTA’s time.

Rather than serve the suspension, agreed to in a settlement with the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Espinal was allowed to forfeit 30 vacation days.

“I paid them the 30 days,” said Espinal, who according to public records cleared $100,055 in 2018.

Because of the ruling, Espinal said he also had to divest himself from the family business.

The MTA confirmed the arrangement to take Espinal’s vacation days in lieu of a suspension because it held him to task while still keeping him working. It also said that it was fine with his eyedrop odyssey because he’d cleared a longer lunch break with his manager.

The MTA did, however, rap Espinal for using his badge as a parking placard.

“Placard abuse is completely unacceptable,” said spokesman Shams Tarek. “This report is being investigated and any credible information will be shared with the Inspector General.”

When all was said and done, Espinal said that he understood why he was hit with the suspension in the first place.

“They couldn’t do nothing,” he said. “They have too many lazy people not doing what they’re supposed to do.”