I work in a group home for the elderly as the activity director. My co workers (the aids) are terrible! They throw paper and carboard in the regular trash, they'll always use plastic dishes because they can't stand to wash one extra dish and they leave the water running all the time for no apparent reason! I mean, they'll put a pitcher of water under the faucet, walk away and just leave it for as long as 2 minutes sometimes. The thing is most of them are stubborn and won't listen to anybody telling them it's a bad idea. I try to catch it when I can, but I'm not around all the time. I can't talk to the assistant manager because she does it too. I could talk to the supervisor, but I don't want to look like I'm really picky. What do you think I should do? Talk to her anyway, or try something else?

I think I wrote about something like this, but about room mates. I think it's easier to change the behavior of coworkers though because it's less personal. For the dishwashing, is there a machine, or would you guys have to hand do it? For everything, since it's a business, you could try the cost argument.