It should be a simple matter of you knowing what it means and pointing out the chip slot, tell her to insert and to leave until the terminal prompts her to remove the card. If acceptance is still refused, call 1-800-VISA-911 for Visa or 1-800-MASTERC for MasterCard and tell them simply that your card is being refused at a merchant that displays the Visa/MasterCard logo. Do it WHILE there and while they're not busy so people behind you don't get too mad.

Reclusive - where on earth are you shopping you're seeing basically a chip transaction a week in the US? I live here and do most of my shopping with chip cards and I've never, once, done a chip transaction in the US. I think of chip transactions as something very, very rare at this point. The only place with EMV-enabled terminals around here is Walmart but they're only enabled on the PIN pad, if you actually insert the card it just throws an error (swiping works fine). Nowhere else has chip slots that react at all.