The following are selected posts by Patrick McKenzie @patio11 which bear on his idea of the "Dangerous Professional". Read them and write a comprehensive summary of what his idea is about, with examples of things that such a professional does and says, with context for each.
(The posts are omitted for brevity.)
What Patrick McKenzie means by a “Dangerous Professional”
A Dangerous Professional (DP) is not a hit-man in a suit; it is an ordinary-looking person who has mastered the practical magic of paperwork, procedure, and persuasion. They are “dangerous” only from the perspective of a large organization that hoped to keep things sloppy, verbal, or undocumented. To the victim of a fraud, the customer stuck in a phone-tree, or the junior employee facing “Um — please stop taking notes,” a DP is simply the person you want on your side.
McKenzie’s scattered Twitter threads form an informal field-manual. Taken together they describe a mindset, a toolkit, and a style of speech that turns asymmetric bureaucratic fights into winnable games.
1. Core attitudes
| Attitude | Explanation | Representative quotes / situations |
|---|---|---|
| “Get it in writing.” | Written records trigger statutes, shot-clocks and institutional accountability. Verbal promises can safely be ignored; signed PDFs and timestamped emails cannot. | Gate-agent rebooking; Reg E dispute e-mails; post-meeting “Hi Bob, thanks for meeting — we discussed…” mail. |
| “Ask for citations.” | Force the other side to say which policy, law or contract clause they are relying on. Often they can’t. | “Please cite, in writing, your refusal to repay a fraud victim under Regulation E’s ‘no printed receipt’ clause.’” |
| Document first, argue later. | A single contemporaneous diary entry, e-mail, or transcript will beat fuzzy recollections years later. | Being told to stop taking notes → hand-wrote a transcript immediately after the meeting. |
| Use the system’s own rules. | Know which regulator, statute, or SLA starts a clock and invoke it deliberately. | FDCPA 30-day dispute window; 10-day FOIA appeal timeline; airline “irregular operations” options budget. |
| Polite, calm, relentless. | No table-pounding unless you lack facts or law. A DP sounds boringly professional while making it clear they can escalate. | Airline chat: “I’m sure you have options for me.” |
| Not necessarily a lawyer. | Lawyers may be DPs, but anyone who learns the playbook can do the job. | “Some lawyers are Dangerous Professionals and some Dangerous Professionals are lawyers, but not all DPs are lawyers.” |
2. Characteristic moves & phrases
| Move | Typical wording | Context & purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Memorialize the meeting. | “Hi Bob, thanks for meeting today. We discussed … Looking forward to working with you.” | Locks the oral conversation into an immutable timeline. |
| Force written authority. | “Could you please set forth, in writing, the policy that governs X?” | Either they pony up a real document or admit it doesn’t exist. |
| Invoke the regulator. | “Under Regulation E you are required to complete your investigation within 10 business days.” | Flips the risk onto the institution’s legal/compliance team. |
| Escalate by address line. | Letters marked Office of the President / Chief Compliance Officer / Investor Relations or sent certified mail, return-receipt requested. | Short-circuits the CSR tier and lands on someone who can say “yes.” |
| Apply the “What are my options?” incantation. | Direct, calm request repeated until the agent presses the escalation button. | Airline IRROPs, billing disputes, any “computer says no” moment. |
| Preserve the shot-clock. | “I reiterate that you have not performed X. Your clock began on [date of first letter].” | Prevents a bureaucracy from resetting its own deadline. |
| Professional presentation props. | A notebook, neatly tabbed binder, diary app with timestamps, or even a FOIA appeal letterhead. | Visual signals that you keep records and will use them. |
3. Field-tested examples
| Domain | What the DP did | Outcome / rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Bank fraud (tap-to-pay scam) | Asked bank to cite in writing why Reg E didn’t apply; pointed out that newspapers are interested. | Legal & PR risk flips, bank almost always refunds. |
| FOIA appeal | First-time appellant writes a letter whose “load-bearing paragraph” threatens cheap, predictable litigation. | Agency promises to respond within statutory timeframe. |
| Airline IRROPs | Calmly repeats “What are my options?”; refuses to guess at alternatives; triggers supervisor override; re-booked on competitor at airline’s expense. | Airlines have budgets for this; agent just needed permission. |
| Medical billing error | Drafts letter to provider’s general counsel: invoice, receipt, card statement attached; notes FDCPA obligations. | Billing department fixes error rather than escalate. |
| Payroll tax mismatch | Letter “in a tone so polite the paint peels” warns bank that Ministry regulators may be consulted. | Forces institution, not customer, to project-manage the clean-up. |
| Meeting where note-taking banned | Continues note-taking, keeps physical control of notebook, immediately diaries that the request was “extraordinary.” | Creates contemporaneous evidence and signals unwillingness to be intimidated. |
| Consumer loans / debt collection | Cites FDCPA; demands validation in writing; records start date of dispute. | Debt collector must stop until it can prove claim. |
| Customer-service dead end | Buys bank’s “cheapest premium product” to gain elite-tier phone number, then internally transfers to the needed department. | Small fee buys access to staff with actual decision authority. |
4. Negative space: who the DP isn’t
- Not a bully. Table-pounding is what lacks facts or law. A DP rarely needs theatrics.
- Not always competent. McKenzie has met “Dangerous-to-Themselves-and-Others Professionals” whose titles outrun their skills.
- Not secretive about methods. The “deep magick” works even when everybody knows the spell; the power lies in doing the boring work.
5. Learning the craft
| Skill to acquire | McKenzie’s tips |
|---|---|
| Reg-reading & citation. | Practice Googling the primary source (“Fannie Mae Seller’s Guide §…”) until you can pull a paragraph in 30 sec. |
| Write like a DP. | Keep templates; use clear subjects; state facts, request, desired timeline. LLMs can draft a passable DP letter now. |
| Note-taking & diaries. | Day One journal, or 1-minute phone videos. Any timestamped medium becomes powerful evidence later. |
| Channel selection. | Pick the communication path that makes their lawyer or compliance officer read your message. |
| Understand incentives. | Know who actually wears financial or regulatory liability inside the org and aim the spotlight there. |
6. Why the archetype matters now
- Cheap generative AI means anyone can summon a respectable DP letter, so institutions that rely on friction (“write us a letter within 30 days”) will face a flood.
- Regulatory shot-clocks (Reg E, FDCPA, FOIA, FDCPA, etc.) were designed when writing letters was hard. Automation breaks that assumption.
- Professional veneer is democratizing. LLM-drafted correspondence turns former class-gated advantages (clarity, citations, formatting) into commodities, shifting power toward individual consumers.
In one sentence
A Dangerous Professional is a calm, paperwork-wielding adult who knows which letter, statute, or shibboleth makes a billion-dollar institution clear its throat and say, “Yes ma’am, right away.”
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