I recently discovered through a video found at https://www.vimeo.com/128198057, that the California Grocers Association inducted the fraudulent Teel's into its "Hall of Acheivement" to show its applause to two of the biggest frauds in the grocery business.  Charles Nordby created the most incredible success story ever in the grocery business by making it possible for Raley's to avoid bankruptcy in 1974, and the CGA applauded the Teel's, who helped defraud Nordby.  The only place the CGA should have put the Teel's is into the "Hall of Shame."  And the Teel's should know that shame from my website alone...

Below is a post card I sent today to the CGA, December 18, 2015, and forward a copy to the frauds at Raley's.  The bottom line is that Charles Nordby's created another "It's a Wonderful Life"...story...George Bailey, from the movie is fiction....Charles Nordby is the real deal.

I contacted Raley's to inform them to keep an eye out for my postcard in the mail as seen below:

It was nearly 40 years ago I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan.  After I arrived I went to a local employment office looking for a job.  I was interviewed by a woman who saw my work history and told me that there was an opening at Meijer Thrifty Acres.  I asked her what was "Meijer's Thrifty Acres"?  She then said to me "You don't know what Meijer Thrifty Acres is?"  I told her no. She said it was a large retailer in Michigan.  So I accepted her offer and took her information to the "Meijer Thrifty Acres" store and met with the store director who looked at my resume and offered me a part-time job.  

Everybody was hired as a part-timer at Meijer and I was to work in the grocery department.  I was told that once I gained some senority I would be able to bid on full-time job openings the occasionally come about when somebody quits, gets transferred or retires.  Before I knew it a full time night crew position was available and I put in a job bid and received the position because nobody else had shown any interest in it and bidded on it.

I had never been inside a store like Meijer's.  In fact, it was the most impressive store I had ever been visited.  It was just huge.  Nobody on the West Coast, where I was from, had ever shopped in a store like Meijer's.  These were beautiful stores that were over 200,000 square feet and I felt privileged to work inside one.  They paid union wages and sometimes they would have manditory double-shifts because of the amount of sales that this particualr store would have and I was very eager to work hard for 16 hours in a supermarket I felt proud to work in.  I was told early on, by another employee, that the grocery department alone did a million dollars a week in sales and that didn't include meat, bakery, produce, etc. And this was back in 1977.  The grocery department included frozen, deli, and grocery food items. Just unbelievable.

I was a very hard worker and because I was also a very good runner, I would run to where ever I needed to go.  If I needed to get groceries from the backroom, I would run to the back room to fetch them.  I was constantly running because I loved to run and work hard because I had this incredible amount of energy.  However, it didn't take long before the workers on the night crew developed a dislike for me.  

While employment at Meijer's did start off as a part-time worker there were many opportunities for me to receive extra hours when somebody called in sick or when the store needed to put extra labor into the store because of the amount of business that this store did.  I was always available to work any hours or 8-hour-shifts needing to be fill and never turned down any hours offered to me.  On many occasions I was called into work extra hours in the frozen food section as I had experience in other stores working this department.  

While at work one day in the frozen food section, during the afternoon shift, a real muscular young employee came up to me and told me in a very unfriendly way that I was making everybody in the grocery department look bad because I ran to get my job done and nobody appreciated my style of working. I told him I wasn't trying to make anybody look bad.  I told him my running and working hard was just me and I didn't care how him or any of the other employees worked.

His name was Hoger Newbauer (misspelled I believe) and he too was a part-time employee and I also believe he was also a student at the University of Michigan.  He basically told me that I could get myself hurt if I continued to work the way that I did and made the crew look bad.  I then I asked him if he was threatening me.  He didn't say anything after that point and just walked away.  So on this day, in the back of my mind, is sitting this vague threat and the reality that the other workers didn't like the way I hustled while on the job and this caused them to build up a dislike for me.  Wow, I never could have imagined that working hard would be so offensive to other workers...

After Hoger's bold talk with me, it became more obvious that the other workers just ignored me.  Except there was a super nice guy named Erv Shroeder (misspelled) who became my only friend at the time and he had been working at Meijer's for many years. In fact, he allowed me to live with him for some time inside of his mobile home....just a super nice guy who really assisted me while working their at Meijer.  He eventually became a runner too and entered marathons...

Then one morning, after working the night shift, a clique of night crew workers, who made it a point to make me to feel excluded while working, were going over to the University Union building after their all-night shift.  The University Union was where students and others could play pool/billiards on the third floor.  

One of the guys, whom I believe was named Tim and didn't like me, asked me sarcasticly if I wanted to go with them and play some pool...as he was thinking a guy like me surely didn't know how to play pool.  Unbeknownst to these guys was the fact that I was an excellent pool player and so I told this guy that I would like to play some pool with them and appreciated the invitation.  A response I believe surprised him and the other workers...now, understand that this night crew consisted of 17 full-time people... So I went with about eight of them to the Univeristy Union to shoot some pool with.

Once inside the pool hall I could see all of these beautiful pool tables that were well taken care of and surprisingly leveled.  This calm atsmosphere I found on the 3rd floor of this building provided me an opportunity to play some of the best pool I have ever played.   They were astonished on how well I could play and just like if I were on a track preparing for a run, these guys were suddenly aware they were now on my turf. 

 
Above photo is from https://uunions.umich.edu/article/billiards-and-games  It is located on the 2nd floor, yet I remember it being on the 3rd floor back in 1977-78-oh well, the tables could have been moved in the nearly 40 years since I was there. Hard to tell by the picture if these tables are still leveled properly and taken good care of.

I have always been prejudged in my life and so when these guys realized how good of a pool player I was, it didn't take long for them to drop their prejudice towards me and make me feel welcomed into their group.  I was now considered "one of the guys" because I passed the pool playing test.

It is also interesting that I learned to shoot a good game of pool, back in 1969, from an ex-felon from San Quentin who had spent time in prison for drugs.  Had I shown this ex-felon, the same kind of prejudice that the night crew workers at Meijer's had shown me (and for no reason other than they felt I made them look bad), I would have never learned to shoot a game of pool as well as I did.  

Below is a vimeo video of a 233,000 sq ft Meijer's from Progessive Grocer.

https://vimeo.com/146650787

Meijer's is privately owned and these stores had the lowest prices anywhere.  Makes me wonder if Wal-Mart tried to copy Meijer's format as these huge supercenters existed long before Wal-Mart.  However, looking at how mismanaged Wal-Mart supercenters are, they did a poor job copying if that is what they tried to do. 

Anyway, it is possible after that morning trip to the University Union pool hall did these night crew co-workers feel I had, once again, made them all look bad. 

The bottom line is that I never expected that my ability to shoot a good game of pool would be the tool I would need to break the ice with a bunch of co-workers who developed a dislike for me only because I worked hard.  

My website has been up on the World-Wide-Web since 2002.  For the last few years I didn't do much editing on my site per se...as I even shut it down for a year.  However,  I realized recently that the sound files that I have relied on for different pages haven't played correctly because of the addition of different sound/music players available to me by the sitebuilder web host I rely on. 

Many of the sound files I did use on this site were in a "wav" format.  Because of that particular format, many newer operating systems and browers weren't playing the sound files on my site.  Therefore, I had to take the time and take these "wav" formatted files and convert them into a  "mp3" format  to play on OS such as Android, etc...because MP3 files were more universally excepted on sound/music players.

So, I am currently taking the time to locate the pages with "wav" sound files, convert them to "mp3" files and correct any problems with them playing on a maxium number of operating systems and browers. 

Recently Albertsons Supermarkets purchased the Safeway chain of supermarkets.  I live in the County of Maui and regularly shop at a Safeway store.  Since Albertsons became the owner of Safeway I have noticed something that Albertsons, in my opinion, is famous for....high prices.  Safeway's prices have done nothing but gone up.  I figured this would happen after Albertsons became Safeway's parent company.

The management at Albertsons seems to have a consistent policy that in order for them to have higher salaries that they must make its honest customers pay for them in the form of higher prices.  And upper management at Albertsons is so incompetent.  They aren't qualified to be baggers in front of the checkstands.

I started working for Albertson's 41 years ago two days before Halloween.  What a horror story that turned out to be.



Click on image above to view Albertson's 109 page-
 

Hillary Clinton is the presidential front-runner for the democrats.  She should be indicted for her mishandling of secure information while the Secretary of State.  Why was she even put in that position?  She wasn't qualified to be the Secretary of State.  This is the number reason our government is so poorly operated.  People are placed into positions that they are clearly not qualified to be in.  She wanted this State position solely so she could exploit for her own personal gain.  And she also had her friends, whom she provided jobs for, who also exploited their positions.  All at a cost to the taxpayers.

It is just mind-boggling that Hillary Clinton is still the Democratic choice.  This defies everything that is known about common sense, integrity, honesty and trust.  She is a pathological, narcissistic, lying, power hungry and inept politician who could care less about anything other than herself.

Her handling of her emails while Secretary of State; deleting emails and wiping clean her email server....this list can go on and on with past scandals...she even had the audacity to lie about be under sniper fire when landing in Bosnia...

Just the fact that she and her sex fiend husband Bill pardoned a slug by he name of Marc Rich only hours before Bill left office should be all the evidence needed to say enough is enough with the Clinton's.

If you read about the Marc Rich pardon, you have to wonder what profiting did the Clinton's gain from this pardon.

The Clinton's smell and they stink and if you don't realize it today, than you drank their poisoned kool-aid.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics-jan-june01-richpardon_01-26/

Don't misunderstand me, I think it would be great to have a woman president.  However, we don't want a woman who is more dishonest than any politician ever to raise their ugly and self-serving head....and this woman brings sex fiend Bill Clinton back into the White House to show more cigar tricks while entertaining young female interns.

So the story now for LA is he is being sued for the books that he wrote perporting that the information inside the book was true.  This guy is just unbelieveable.  He was unjustly enriched by the fraud he committed in his pursuit to win the TDF multiple times.

Raley's got into trouble too by writing its history book.  It was a book of lies and this deceitful book of theirs was so cleverly written as to hide the truth about the man Charles Nordby and the impact that he had on Raley's turnaround during its darkest days. 

Charles Nordby didn't sue Raley's for its history book but sued them for fraud and unjustment enrichment because his suit laid out the facts that his expertise in the grocery business and retail security was absolutely necessary for them to survive and his litigation revealed the clever fraud that was committed against him to get him to quit his company position back in 1976. 

None of the Raley or Teel clan had the necessary experience to prevent Raley's from going bankrupt in 1973-74, in which Raley's would have, and none of them should have been unjustly enriched by the fraud committed against Nordby.

And let's not forget to highlight the SEIU President, Mary Kay Henry.

Plus there are approximately 233 other employees at this international union bringing in a six-figure salary.  Total payroll disbursements was around $61 million....wow...If only workers at McDonald's and Wal-Mart could get a job at the headquarters of this union.

Above is the bus depot I dropped off hitchhiker.

"I will never forget you."  Those were the last words I heard from her while dropping her off at the Sacramento Greyhound Bus Depot back in 1977.  Who was she?  I don't know. It was Friday afternoon and I had just gotten off work in Sparks, Nevada.  I was planning on driving to where my dad and mom lived at in Cameron Park and stay with them over the week-end before heading back to Sparks on Sunday evening.  

I was working for Warehouse Markets at this time as an undercover grocery clerk.  My dad had quit Raley's a few months earlier and was hired by this firm to troubleshoot its operation and asked me to come to Nevada and work for him.   I was heading out of Reno and noticed a woman hitchhiking on one of the busy streets.  It may have been Keystone Ave, but truthfully speaking, I don't remember the exact street I was on.  I quickly decided to pull over and ask her if she was going in my direction- in other words, was she heading to California? 

I rolled down the front passenger window and she came up to the window.  I asked her where she was going?  She said she was going to San Francisco and cautiously asked me if I was associated with the group of drunk guys in a pick-up truck who minutes earlier tried to pick her up?  I told her no, I was by myself and I was heading to California to where my parents lived and she was welcomed to travel with me to at least Sacramento.  She opened the car door and got inside. She was an attractive woman with long brunette hair and probably in her late 20's, maybe early 30's. I was really surprised to see a woman like her hitch-hiking. 

As I headed for Interstate 80 to drive west out of Reno, she started off by telling me the story of why she was in Reno and also why she was hitch-hiking back to San Francisco. It turned out that she had taken a bus from San Francisco to Reno to gamble and hopefully strike it rich like the millions of other people hoping to strike it rich at a casino.  And like so many of the other gamblers, she lost all of her money, including the money she needed to pay for her bus ticket back to S.F. 

She then told me she had been gambling the last two days, hadn't eaten anything for a while and hadn't even slept in over a day.  It seemed like by the time she had finished that sentence she had already fallen asleep and she was completely out like I had turned off the light.  As she slept, I was sad to realize how this woman found herself traveling in the passenger seat of my car.  She seemed so defeated and she did appear like she really hadn't eaten or slept in a while.  I was driving to Sacramento, CA and had a woman in my car who was really struggling in her life. 

While she slept I tried to figure out the best way to assist her.  I figured I would find a food store along the way and pick-up some food for her knowing she had to be hungry. After crossing the California state line, I came upon a small convenience store and stopped to purchase some food.  I tried to be as quiet as possible hoping I wouldn't awake this woman.  I purchased a sandwich, some fruit and juice and went back to my car to continue on to my parents house. 

After entering the car, the woman came out of her sleep and asked me why I stopped.  I told her I purchased some food for when she awoke and handed the food to her seeing she was now awake.   She thanked me and after she finished her food she continued to tell me more about her life and the sad experiences that led her to Reno.  I was in the presence of someone who had been down on their luck and the more I listened to her the sadder I became.   

I was now approaching Colfax and the woman sitting next to me was feeling a lot better after getting some sleep and eating  a small lunch.  I knew that in order for me to get to Cameron Park, I would have to take the Sierra College exit, drive through Orangevale and head toward highway 50.  In the back of my mind the only choice I had for her was to take her all the way to Sacramento like I had planned and drop her off at the Greyhound Bus Depot. 

I never disclosed my plan to her and told her that I would take her as far as Sacramento in which she said would be much appreciated.  As we got into Sacramento, I took the exit I knew would lead me to the bus depot. As I approached the parking area of the bus depot she asked me what I was doing.  I told her that I couldn't take her all the way to San Francisco even though I would really like to, but I wanted to make sure she got there safely seeing it was getting dark, and the only way I could do that was to buy her a bus ticket to get her home. 

We entered the bus terminal and I purchased her a ticket for the next bus departing to S.F.  I gave her the ticket and mentioned to her that she should probably get in line.  Knowing that she didn't have any money, I handed her $20.  Looking totally grateful, she thanked me and asked me if she could give me a kiss.  I told her a kiss wasn't necessary.  She asked me what my name was and I told her my name wasn't important. I said good-bye and wished her luck and headed for the exit door while she stood in line.  As I moved closer to the door I could hear her say in a sincere thankful voice "I will never forget you." 

Those last words she spoke to me I have clearly remembered since that special day I was given the opportunity to help someone in need.   I was now on my way to spend the next couple of days with my parents in Cameron Park.   When I arrived my mom and dad were happy to see me but wondered why it took me so long to get to their residence.  I never shared with my parents this unusual experience I had picking up a woman hitch-hiker in Reno, Nevada.  To this day this is what I know: 

If this woman is still alive she has never forgotten the stranger in Reno, Nevada, who picked her up hitch-hiking while she was going through a very low point in her life, showed her some compassion and made her life a little more brighter when she returned to the sunny state of California.