Background: I work as a microbiologist at a very small, private company that does industrial micro testing (E.coli for water, Legionella, metalworking fluid etc). I've been there a year. There's me, my coworker, our lab tech, and lab manager. We do a lot of gross micro work on the bench. We do not do any kind of molecular testing for IDs and stuff, to give you an idea.

This past summer our Lab Manager gave their 2 weeks notice as they had found a new job. We've finally just hired a new Lab Manager. She comes from a medical microbiology background, has a PhD, was working in a healthcare setting managing many others.

She started part time while still working the other job because we were being stretched thin with just the two of us and the lab tech helping where possible. We really needed a third bench person in the lab.

She's now full time and, ugh, coworker and I don't know what to do. The power dynamic is so weird. We've been training her in basic microbiology. Basic stuff you learn in intro to micro lab class. Plating dilutions, finding office supplies (I kid you not we've shown her the supply room three different times. This building is smaller than my house, you can't get lost) I've been emphasizing note taking because our lab certifications are on the line with documentation but when she was writing up her first reports today the notes were all over the place and she hadn't counted any of the colonies at the time of reading the bacterial plates. She sat and watched me write reports for 2 hours but still struggled to remember which fields in our -templates- needed to be changed to reflect client information for the samples. I'm her tech support because I can google a solution.

She forgets things we tell her the same day. We have to micromanage her time. I had to remind her to read results of samples she had set up.

It's starting to impact my productivity in getting results back to our customers. Coworker and I feel like we still don't have help.

I'm just, baffled. I have no idea where the boundary is between someone being new at a job and just incompetent. What is a reasonable expectation for a new supervisor coming in from a separate but related field? Should coworker and I be the ones training her in this stuff? I saw the job advert, it clearly stated that bench work was a significant part of the duties.

I really need a third perspective on this. Thanks