REPORTERS NOTEBOOK (Gettysburg Times: 10/04/08) - "Splitting the Bill"

Why is it that every time I’m out a restaurant with what I would consider a small group of people — four or less — and we ask the waitress or cashier to split our bill, they look at us as if we’re speaking Japanese?
Seriously, what is so hard about splitting a bill?
I was enjoying brunch last weekend with friends in Gettysburg, and we took our invoice to the cashier, and asked her to split it four ways.
She stared at us.
It's not rocket science.
Seconds later, she pressed a variety of buttons, and the cash register malfunctioned.
The cashier then asked colleagues for help, and buzzed the manager for assistance.
I stepped outside, unable to bear it anymore.
Our country has landed people on the moon, created an atomic bomb, Al Gore invented the Internet, the Wright Brothers flew an airplane for the first time, and we even have a telephone thanks Alexander Graham Bell.
But for some reason, we haven’t figured out how to split a bill four ways.
~ Scot Andrew Pitzer.