Vacation Tipping

When I travel with groups of friends we'll eat out often. As the group is larger than six there's almost always a 20% auto gratuity charge. We notice it when everyone pitches in enough money to cover their food and then we don't think we have enough for tip. Then we examine the bill again, adjust how much we thought we had to give, and go on our way. But sometimes the auto gratuity is snuck in. One place in Seattle was so bold as to throw the auto gratuity in the middle of a list of food under "Kitchen misc gravy." We were wondering who ordered what could have only been a monstrous vat of gravy for $35, and when we asked the waitress she said it was the auto gratuity. Under normal circumstances we would have given this woman hell for trying to sneak in the extra-large tip, but the day prior our friend had choice words for a server who didn't tell us that the check included the tip, even though it had clearly listed "Auto Gratuity 20%" at the bottom. We'd asked him to not yell at anymore servers on the trip, and we all had to follow our own advice. In hindsight, we should have just asked for $30 worth of gravy and then dumped it in their mailbox.