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THey have the technical ability to be very precise, but any modern store is going to have them calibrated to allow some gratuitous shifting.
You need only look at the difference between plastic and reusable bags to see how generous they must be by default. If you put a reusable bag down without an item, they're heavy enough to register as one, so there's a bit of technique to putting your first item down.
My local grocery stores' self-checkout kiosks all have a special "reusable bag" button - you press it, put your bags on the bagging surface, and continue on with grocery scanning. My one issue with it is that my bags tend to collapse in on themselves when empty, and the scale freaks out when I correct that to put stuff in them.
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They make you weigh the bags first here. I suppose this presents the opportunity to finagle the system, but they always seem to watch me like hawks, and I’m hardly the median grocery store shoplifter demographically.
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