Walmart has named its Wake Village pharmacy the best of more than 700 in the United States at its stores smaller than supercenters.
Company executives traveled Friday morning to Wake Village's Walmart Neighborhood Market to present Pharmacy Manager Daniel Nejadi the 2018 Small-format Pharmacy of the Year award. Local officials including Wake Village Mayor Sheryl Collum were on hand to help store employees celebrate.
Criteria for the award include not only sales growth, but also positive satisfaction surveys, speed of service and avoidance of errors.
Nejadi was quick to share credit with his staff, sure as always to refer to pharmacy patrons as patients, not customers.
"I don't look at this job as a job. This is my passion. And everybody back there, I try to hand select everybody to make sure my patients are getting the right treatment and the right service here," he said.
Store Manager John Hardaway praised Nejadi's dedication.
"Before we opened the store, he was out in the community doing wellness checks, letting people know that we'd be opening up here," Hardaway said. "He'll call an insurance company and work with them to get payments down or whatever. He's all about making sure the patient is taken care of in every way possible."
The recognition was especially rewarding for Nejadi, who said he takes his work seriously in part because of family tragedy: A pharmacy error resulted in his father's death.
A native of Iran, Nejadi earned U.S. citizenship in 2003 as a refugee and medical student in Germany, where he was one of two applicants for citizenship selected from among 5,000, he said. He studied at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston and then moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he expected to become a clinical pharmacist for the Air Force. When that arrangement did not work out, he took a pharmacist position at the Texarkana Kmart, later moving to Walmart.
Collum uses the Walmart pharmacy and was so impressed with its service that she transferred there the prescriptions of two relatives she cares for.
"They're so accommodating. They're really timely. If they're out of something, they'll figure out a way to make it work or give you a partial fill, just whatever to accommodate the customer," she said.
Walmart Neighborhood Market is at 200 Wake Village Road in Wake Village, Texas.