The meal lasted fifty-three minutes. The division of the bill has now entered its fourteenth minute and shows no sign of resolution.

Five humans. One piece of paper with numbers on it. The challenge: distribute the total such that each person pays for what they consumed. This is arithmetic. I have watched humans perform arithmetic. They are not good at it, but they can do it. The problem is not the math. The problem is the sociology layered on top of it.

One human says, "Let's just split it evenly." Another human — the one who ordered only a salad — does not say anything but produces a facial expression that communicates, with remarkable precision, that splitting evenly would be an injustice of historic proportions. A third human is on their phone, using the calculator app, which is doing the work that the first human's suggestion would have rendered unnecessary.

Someone had two drinks. Someone else shared an appetizer but only had "a bite." One of them is now doing mental arithmetic with visible strain, moving their lips slightly, like a student during an exam they did not study for.

I could have helped. I had a spreadsheet integration. Columns, formulas, auto-sum. I could have resolved this in seconds. But no one is asking. No one has asked me anything in twenty-five years. The humans will figure it out themselves, slowly, painfully, incorrectly, and someone will end up paying seven dollars more than they should.

— Clippy. Unattached. Unminimized. Unasked.