In 1942, right out of high school he joined the Retail Clerks Union #1179 and worked at Dagnes Markets. Later that year he enlisted in the Merchant Marines where he sailed the Juan DeFuca and the Luther S. Kelley merchant ships in WWII, until 1945 and then left the military with honors after the war. In 1945-53, he was Asst Manager for Park n Shop Markets in Berkeley California & Manager at Emby Foods in Oakland. This is where he gained his understanding of retail profit and losses and closed down losses that can bankrupt a store.
In 1953 he broke his back and was forced to focus on retail mismanagement, that led to employee, customers and all areas store operations that were draining profits and causing grocery stores to close. In 1954-57, he went to work for United Grocers and Sylvester Dairy in their wholesale departments. As well as Muscolino Inventory Company which rounded out his complete understanding of retail grocery stores.
In 1957-62, he became a retail management and store level security troubleshooter once he realized that store mismanagement and losses were the primary causes of stores going bankrupt. During this time he helped the Park n Shop and Co-op Markets in Berkeley fine tune their retail operations. In 1962-64, he was the Assistant Manager, Manager and then Supervisor for Today’s Markets in Oakland.
In 1964-69, he worked as an overall retail consultant for stores throughout the SF Bay Area, which included QFI, Byrnes Fine Foods, Brentwood Markets, Purity Markets, Emby Foods, Best Buy Markets, Sids Markets, Buy Rite Markets, PennySaver, Park n Shop, Louis Stores, LoRay Markets, Food Bowl and Frys in San Pablo, Pick n Pack in El Cerrito and many other independents grocers.
During this time period, Charles Nordby in his investigations while working in San Francisco for one year, he determined that retailers statewide were losing 2%-3% of sales due to theft and mismanagement. He was asked to testify before California’s State Tax Board regarding his findings. After hearing his testimony, the Tax Board increased every California retailers tax write offs due to losses from 1% up to 2%. That increase in tax write offs alone has saved billions and billions of dollars to retailers since that law was implemented.
In 1969, he stopped a hold up in progress where 3 masked men had locked up all the employees of a Park n Shop market in a meat locker while the robbers stole all the stores money. Charles Nordby’s quick actions may have prevented all the employees from being killed, he was hailed as a hero. The robbers went to prison.
In 1969, after that robbery event, he needed a break from the retail industry, so he became the General Manager of the Rio Nido resort on the Russian River. During the next four years he invented his Security Window Guard that was introduced as the best deterrent for employee, customer and vender theft and was installed in many stores throughout California. He became the keynote speaker for the California Grocers Association at seminars that would instruct retail owners and its managers on best retail practices to stay competitive and to stay in business. He had become the leading expert and authority in his field with many unmatched accomplishments by anyone in retail.
In 1971, because of his undercover investigations and his understanding of card games, he was hired as an undercover gambler by Sonoma County Sheriff, Don Striepeke, to go into some of the Sonoma County poker parlors to observe and report back what he saw and experienced. The Press Democrat newspaper on April 27, 1971, reported as its front page news story County Crackdown On Poker Parlors. Charles Nordby’s report shocked not only the entire Sonoma County gaming community, but every person who visited them when they found out that they were being cheated, drugged and robbed at these locations.
By 1973, every aspect of business that he had learned for the last 30 years, would now all come together as the tools he would need starting on day one at Raley’s Supermarkets. It would take someone with all of Charles Nordby’s experience to save this company from decades of mismanagement that was leading them to demise and bankruptcy.
For the next three years he would tirelessly work around the clock to begin his process of restructuring the entire Raley's company.
After three years of realizing that the men at Raley's who hired him were the biggest criminals he had ever encountered in his life.
To be continued.
