a co-worker with no initiative

If it affects you work you should really do something about it. Tell his supervisor or manager about it. But if i does not affect you anyhow, I think you should just ignore him.

I think it is more appropriate if you supervisor should the one to call the attention of your officemate and motivate this employee to be more active and competitive. In any office I think It cannot be avoided to have that kind of co-workers, so for us to maintain our stead without letting this environment affect you, we must be more focus with our assigned task and any undesirable character in the office should be addressed properly to the proper personnel. Ultimately, we have to practice maximum tolerance.

I usually would just keep quiet. If I was the manager or his supervisor, I would inform him as nicely and constructively as possible what he needed to do. I have had two supervisors who had really good people skills and EQ that even if they correct us with our mistakes we don't end up being offended.

I think there is a thin line there. I think everyone experiences this but often times we need to keep quiet about it because it's not our place to tell them to improve their work habits. That needs to come from a manager. So to me it's a hard thin line there because we could be putting ourselves in a bad light if we criticise someone else over their work habits. Have seen this back fire on people that spoke to someone about their work when they weren't in the position to do so.

Straight talk is encouraged in our workplace. When there are things that I am not amused at or get disappointed at, I immediately approach the person. I tell him or her how I feel in that specific situation and tell him or him that he could have gone through this correct process. I would also tell him/her that if there are things that he/she is having difficulties with, he/she may approach me or anybody who could help him/her in getting things done. Bottom line is if his/her task won't get completed, possible consequence would be that other tasks might get delayed or not done due to his/her inability to get his/her own tasks done. I believe, that this workplace problems can only be solved through communication and with the use of the proper channels.

You can open this to him in a professional manner. Make sure you are calm when you do this, it will not do and reflect good on you if you will become too agressive and on the fight mode. I know it can be irritating that some people would need to be spoon-fed and manhandled before they can function properly, makes you wonder how they got the job in the first place. But if you will just keep inside you the feeling and remain quiet on the whole thing, you will be the one on the losing end especially of his work is directly related to yours. Both your performance will suffer, or even that of the whole department, if this issue wasn't addressed or even gets worse.