FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY TAYLOR TELFORDIn a wrenching essay, a tech
executive in Portland, Ore.,
shared how the death of his 8-
year-old son forced him to re-
think how he has oriented his life
around work, and he urged other
parents to do the same reexami-
nation.
In a LinkedIn post that has
gone viral, J.R. Storment detailed
how his days had been dominated
by work since he co-founded the
Portland cloud management
start-up Cloudability in 2011, the
same month he had twin boys.
And he wrote about the regret he
felt about things he wished he
had done differently with his son
Wiley, who died unexpectedly in
his sleep last month of complica-
tions from epilepsy.
Storment said he is struggling
to redefine his relationship with
work — and urged other parents
not to make the mistakes he made.
“A lot of the things you are
likely spending your time on
you’ll regret once you no longer
have the time,” Storment wrote.
Parents frequently schedule
one-on-one meetings with co-
workers, but do they schedule
them with their children? “If
there’s any lesson to take away
from this, it’s to remind others
(and myself ) not to miss out on
the things that matter,” he said in
his essay.
The post struck a chord with
working parents trying to juggle
children and jobs in an age when
technology dictates that work be-
gins the moment you pick up your
phone in the morning and stops
only when you force yourself to
put it down at the end of the day.
“Through the story about this
tragic event comes an incredibly
important reminder about priori-
ties — one that the term
#worklifebalance can’t even be-
gin to describe,” tweeted Jullie
Strippoli, an assistant branch
manager with Charles Schwab. “Istrongly recommend that every
working parent read J.R.’s post.”
In a 2018 Ciphr study of 1,
working parents, more than half
said they felt judged by colleagues
or bosses for trying to balance
their home and work lives. Par-
ents and non-parents alike are
increasingly struggling with the
threat of burnout, which comes at
a significant cost: The Harvard
Business Review estimates that
$125 billion to $190 billion of
health-care spending each year is
tied to the physical and psycho-
logical tolls of burnout.
On the morning Storment
would learn that his son had died,
he rose early for back-to-back
meetings and left home without
saying goodbye, completing two
work calls before arriving at the
office. When the call came from
his wife, Storment was in a meet-
ing regarding paid time off with
employees in his Portland office.
He had just told them he hadn’t
taken more than one unbrokenweek off work in eight years.
Storment has not worked since
Wiley died, and he said he is
struggling with how to return “in
a way that won’t leave me again
with the regrets I have now.”“To be honest, I’ve considered
not going back,” Storment wrote.
“But I believe in the words of
Kahlil Gibran who said, ‘Work is
love made visible.’ To me, that line
is a testament to how much wegain, grow and offer through the
work we do. But that work needs
to have a balance that I have
rarely lived.”
Wiley was already planning for
future business ventures, Stor-
ment wrote, including a smoothie
stand, a virtual-reality-headset
operation and a “spaceship build-
ing company.” He would some-
times invite his brother and par-
ents to join in his planning but
made it clear that he would take
the lead.
That made reading the words,
“Occupation: Never Worked” on
his son’s death certificate one of
his most painful moments, Stor-
ment wrote.
“We wish a lot of things were
different, but mostly we wish we’d
had more time. If you are a parent
and have any capacity to spend
more time with your kids, do,”
Jessica Brandes, Wiley’s mother
and Storment’s wife, wrote in her
own LinkedIn post.
[email protected]A grieving father warns other working parents to make time for their children
BY DREW HARWELLSen. Edward J. Markey (D-
Mass.) is seeking answers from
the doorbell-camera firm Ring
about its hundreds of video-shar-
ing partnerships with U.S. police
agencies, citing “serious privacy
and civil liberties concerns” that
he said could put people at risk.
In a letter Thursday to Amazon
chief executive Jeff Bezos, whose
company bought Ring last year,
Markey requested details on the
company’s coordination with law
enforcement, its marketing to
consumers and the more than
400 police partnerships it has
across the country, as first report-
ed last week by The Washington
Post. Bezos also owns The Post.
“The integration of Ring’s net-
work of cameras with law en-
forcement offices,” Markey wrote,
“could easily create a surveil-
lance network that places dan-
gerous burdens on people of
color and feeds racial anxieties in
local communities.”
Ring said it is reviewing the
letter but did not offer any im-
mediate response. Bezos andAmazon did not respond to re-
quests for comment.
Ring has said the footage from
its line of Internet-connected
doorbell cameras can help safe-
guard residential areas and pro-
vide key evidence for police, and
the company has advertised its
camera network as helping sup-
port a “new neighborhood
watch.”
Ring’s police partners can use
a special service to request home-
owners’ camera footage from
within a specified time and loca-
tion range. Officers do not re-ceive ongoing or live-video ac-
cess, and homeowners can de-
cline the requests, which Ring
says in its emails to homeowners
can help “make your neighbor-
hood a safer place.”
In his letter, Markey said
Ring’s courting of police agencies
was “troubling” in light of Ama-
zon’s other work, including its
marketing of its facial-recogni-
tion software, Rekognition, to
U.S. police agencies. Ring camer-
as do not use facial-recognition
software, but the company has
expressed interest in applyingthe technology to its camera
systems as a boost for home
security.
Markey also said Ring’s re-
quests of homeowners to share
their footage used “targeted” and
“leading” language to nudge
homeowners toward approving
police use. He asked whether the
company would seek an expert
review of its consent prompts to
ensure the company “does not
use manipulative or coercive lan-
guage with its users.”
Markey also asked the compa-
ny to provide a detailed timeline
of its policies and police partner-
ships; a list of all local and federal
agencies that have ever had ac-cess to Ring footage; details on
security safeguards the company
has implemented to protect the
footage; a standard video-shar-
ing agreement between Ring and
police; and a list of any experts
Ring has consulted on civil liber-
ties and criminal justice.
Markey’s letter could extend
scrutiny of the company, which
has worked to develop relation-
ships with police agencies across
the country, often with little fan-
fare or community input. Markey
previously has called for investi-
gations into how wireless carri-
ers provide Americans’ cellphone
data to law enforcement.
[email protected]Sen. Markey seeks answers from Ring on doorbell-camera police network
BY TODD C. FRANKELWhen the Boy Scouts of America
recalled its neckerchief slides last
year because of high lead content,
it announced the recall on its Face-
book and Instagram pages, but not
to its 80,000 Twitter followers.
And when Fisher-Price this year
recalled 4.7 million Rock ‘n Play
inclined sleepers after infant
deaths, the company alerted its
6.7 million followers on Twitter and
Facebook, but not its nearly
540,000 followers on Instagram.
Many child-product companies
are not doing enough online to
warn consumers about potentially
dangerous products recalled in co-
ordination with the Consumer
Product Safety Commission, ac-
cording to a new survey by the
advocacy group Kids in Danger.
The group found that only65 percent of the 117 companies
that had a child product recalled
in the past two years posted the
recall details on their corporate
websites. Just over half of the com-
panies posted a recall on their
Facebook pages. Less than half
tweeted about a recall.
But the worst performance
came on Instagram, where less
than 20 percent of companies
warned consumers about a recall.“This is just such a simple thing,
and companies don’t do it,” said
Nancy Cowles, executive director
of Kids in Danger.
Illustrating the problem’s com-
plexity, Boy Scouts of America did
publish recall notices about its
neckerchief slides on the websites
and social media accounts of two
scout-related entities: the Scout
Shop and Scouting Magazine. It
didn’t use the main BSA Twitteraccount. But the organization said
in a statement to The Washington
Post that it tried to use the best
ways to reach its intended audi-
ence.
Companies are not required to
tell the public about a recall. They
need to provide only a remedy and
a way for consumers to contact
them. The CPSC lists recalls on its
website. But that limits a recall’s
effectiveness, Cowles said.
Kids in Danger said it wants the
CPSC to require companies to
publish recall notices on theirwebsites and social media plat-
forms, “rather than requiring cus-
tomers to search for recalls on
their own volition.”
That could boost awareness of
recalls like the one last year for Jané
Muum strollers, which violated fed-
eral safety standards. The company
didn’t mention the recall to its nearly
100,000 followers on social media,
according to Kids in Danger.
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
businessReport: Companies don’t take full advantage of social media to warn of recalls
J.R. STORMENT
J.R. Storment and his family. His son Wiley, right, died last month.*Min. purchase of 50 linear feet required, offer expires 9/30/19. Offer applies to Gutter Helmet only and must be presented at time of estimate, cannot be combined with any other offers and subject to change without notice. Void where
prohibited by law. †Subject to credit approval. Interest accrues during promotional period but all interest is waived if paid in full within 18 months. Lednor is neither a broker nor a lender. Financing is provided by 3rd party lenders, under
terms & conditions arranged directly between the customer and such lenders, satisfactory completion of finance documents is required. Any finance terms advertised are estimates only. DC#420218000007 - MD MHIC #48622 - VA
#2705036173 © 2019 Lednor Corporation.888-417-
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