Senior But Slaying It

Interns over 50 at Gen Z-run start-up make waves online

- Carmen Sin

Two unlikely interns have been making waves on social media, not for their bumbling inexperience, but the opposite.

At Malaysian pimple patch start-up Dododots, Mr Leslie Mah, 62, and Ms Loh Kit Lan, 55, have just been made full-timers, after a year of working as "senior interns".

Co-founder Ethan Wong, 26, announced their promotions on LinkedIn, delighting netizens who left more than 150 comments, tickled by parallels to the 2015 Hollywood movie The Intern. The film starred Robert De Niro as a 70-year-old in the titular role, opposite a much younger boss played by Anne Hathaway.

Mr Mah, now a warehouse manager, told The Sunday Times in a video interview that his colleagues were mostly below 30.

"Babies," said Ms Loh, the resident personal assistant.

Uncle Leslie and Auntie Stephanie, as they are known to their colleagues, said they were just "looking to fill the time" when they signed up in January 2024.

Both were encouraged by their children to apply, after the Selangor-based company listed packing internships for people over the age of 50.

Mr Mah said: "Maybe (my daughter) was fed up with me being at home. She knew there was so much more I could do."

The former sales manager had been retired for nine years, but he was dazzled by the Dododots team's energy, which he saw in videos posted to the company's TikTok page.

"If only you could have seen it through my eyes. The videos portrayed so much fun and love, I thought they had to be made up."