Dis-charging

My dad and I ate tonight with a friend at the restaurant where he works (so I don't want to mention his name or that of the restaurant here). We picked up the check as usual--it was $52 and change not counting the tip. I handed the waiter our charge card. He comes back with a receipt reading, "DECLINED: Amount Cannot Be Less Than One Dollar" (sic--I don't know why they capitalized each word). I asked the waiter to run the card again, and the same thing happened again. We finally had to pay with a different card.

Two thoughts crossed my mind: that we were less than $1 from the limit, or that the code might have been a euphemism used for suspect charges. So, I called the credit card company. We're more than $10,000 below the limit (which shocked me, since I thought that card had an $8000 limit), and the charges the lady read off were all legitimate ones. Further, the credit card company didn't even know there had been an attempt to run the card.

Have you ever heard about something like that before?