Bad hydrometer?

Hello, I'm a new homebrewer from the northern Atlanta suburbs. First batch of oatmeal stout is 4 days into primary fermentation, gurgling out the scent of bananas.

Question: Have any of you ever had a really badly calibrated hydrometer? The one that came with my kit from Midwest Supplies was exploded on arrival, so they kindly agreed to send a new one. I ran to the LHBS to pick one up anyway so I could get to brewing... impatient. Today the replacement from Midwest came in, and I tried both of them in 60F tap water. The one from LHBS reads a reasonable 1.002, but the one from Midwest is reading 1.016! That seems like an unreasonably high correction factor to me.

Did you spin the hydrometer to nock the bubbles off

Yep, and it's not touching the walls or anything, and I seem to be reading the other one fine.

whoaaa ya I'd say something is definitely f'd up with that one from Midwest.

If you really wanna know if your other hydrometer is accurate, put it in some distilled water @ 60 degrees

Just make sure that you spin it and that there are no bubbles that may be sticking to the hydrometer throwing off the reading. Sounds like you got a bad hydrometer, good thing you picked up a second!