Our Roberts 60th Birthday
Team Westwood Comes Together To Celebrate Roberts’ Big Day
Over the weekend, Team Westwood were delighted to gather at one of our favourite haunts, the always excellent Boars Head in Standish, to help celebrate one of our colleagues’ big birthday.
Roberts Malinovskis, currently one of our logistics team and amongst the longest serving ‘Westwooders’ based at our Wigan Head Office, has just turned 60 years young, so we threw a party in his honour on Saturday night, complete with music, singing, dancing, food and drinks.
A highlight of the night, was when our very own Managing Director, Chris Melling, took the mic’ and paid a moving and personal tribute to Roberts, words which, for anyone who knows Chris, came straight from the heart as he described how it was Roberts came to find himself working at Westwood and how much he values Roberts’ hard work.
Roberts is originally from Latvia and has lived in the UK for many, many years now. He first came to Chris’s attention after being told about a man who was out delivering leaflets door to door in the cold and driving rain one winter. Of course, this was Roberts, but what set him apart was that, despite the appalling conditions, the freezing and miserable weather, Roberts was taking the trouble to honestly and diligently put a leaflet through every single door (rather than, for example, doing what many in those conditions would have done and dump the leaflets at the earliest opportunity.)
It’s said that you can’t teach a work ethic and Chris recognised in Roberts, a hard working man of honour and integrity and was determined to offer him a job. Chris succeeded in recruiting Roberts to Team Westwood and he spent most of the following years as a skilled valeter bringing a showroom shine to our sales and rental vehicles. That was nearly a decade ago and while more recent years, given the physical demands of valeting, has seen Roberts spending more time doing driving work, he remains a valued and integral part of the team. Roberts has a heart of gold and is one of the quietest, most honest and decent human beings you could hope to encounter.
Roberts also took a turn on the microphone. He expressed his appreciation for the party and how much it meant to him to be amongst friends and colleagues as well as how happy he is to work with us all and for Chris. It has to be said that for a man for whom English isn’t always easy (it’s his 3rd language after all), Roberts’ sincerity shone through and he was more eloquent than he probably gave himself credit for.
We were absolutely delighted to party into the small hours and for a man who’s just turned 60, Roberts was on fine form on the dance floor, showing colleagues a third of his age (yes you read that right) that a few extra years under ones belt simply means you have plenty of extra dance moves you won’t find on Fortnight or TikTok (whatever those are).
‘Daudz laimes dzimšanas dienā’ Roberts, we hope you had a wonderful time!
