Was it creepy to use a friend's address from a form to send him a T-shirt?

I’m trying to get an outside perspective on something I did in a friendship. I want an honest assessment, including if what I did was genuinely creepy or inappropriate.

A friend and I were living together at the time. I had to sign a form that required a witness, so I asked him to witness my signature. As part of the form, he had to provide his address on the form.

About a month later, we were both working remotely and living separately. We were joking about a particular T-shirt, and I decided to send the shirt to him as a surprise.

The way I got his address was by getting the form from my bag and looking at his address. I did not ask him for his address again or tell him I was going to use the address from the form.

He thought this was creepy, specifically because I had gone back to the form and gotten his address from there for a completely different purpose.

I understand why he could see that as a boundary issue. The address was given to me in the context of witnessing a form, not for sending him things. At the same time, the purpose was a T-shirt related to a joke between us, and I wasn't trying to track him, investigate him, or find out where he lived. I just thought it would be funny to send a friend a gag gift and thought "huh he gave me his address on a form a month back...I can just use it and the gift will remain a surprise". We had also lived together previously.

So I'm trying to understand the outside perspective:

Was this actually creepy behavior, or was it more of a socially inappropriate/boundary-crossing thing that I should have handled differently?

I'm not looking for people to automatically side with me. If most people would find this genuinely creepy, I'd like to understand why.

Posted Aug 21, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

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