Aziz was uncomfortable when I asked about his family background and why he chose to sell frozen food from house to house.
The 24-year-old was unable to find a job after graduating from a local university with an engineering degree a year ago, when the pandemic was at its height in July.
"Jobs are hard to find these days. Even if there is an opening, the employers require work experience which I don't have," he said before asking if I was serious about buying a packet of frozen curry puffs.
Aziz is a part of Gen Z. Generation Zs are those born between 1997 and 2015, hence putting their age group in the range of 6-24 years old this year.
Aziz, like many of his peers, is finding it hard to survive. He is the eldest in his family and has to support his unemployed parents and three younger siblings who live in Padang Jawa near Shah Alam.
Due to the global pandemic, unemployment is on the rise across the board. Gen Z, especially those in their 20s, have been hit the hardest.
There are about six million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 in Malaysia's labour force. The future for them looks bleak, especially with the prolonging of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This age group faces a very high risk of unemployment.
Due to the contraction in the job market, jobs have been cut back. Only those with work experience or with good academic grades will manage to secure jobs, although the entry salary level is low.
It has been reported that the unemployment rate in the country is at its highest in 10 years, at 3.9 per cent up to March this year.
The age group that had the highest unemployment rate were those between 15 and 30 years, at a rate of 6.9 per cent, based on data from the Statistics Department.
In a tightened economy, young people have been finding it impossible to support their families on meagre incomes.
Many young Malaysians remain stagnant in their lives right now, with the decreasing number of job opportunities.
With the lower incomes generated by families, many youths will opt to drop out of school to work and support their families.
Even before the pandemic, there were about 220,000 teenagers who dropped out of school in 2018 to enter the labour market.
I'm sure there are more dropouts now.
One labour force survey last year revealed that 71 per cent of the Malaysian workforce did not possess any type of tertiary education. Meanwhile, graduates from colleges and universities will face a mounting challenge to gain employment, as many lack necessary skills and competencies.
In my readings, I was startled to find that 80,300 unemployed graduates were young people below the age of 25.
Putting aside the vicious cycle of the economic fallout, I have come to a realisation that many of our universities are producing graduates who possess irrelevant skills and competencies required by current industries.
Gen Z are not the only ones struggling.
The Millennials (Generation Y, born from 1980) are also sitting precariously on the edge as they are facing several impediments from high debt.
Many young Malaysians have been declared bankrupt as they maximised their credit cards to pay housing and car loans. Worse still, it's exacerbated by low wages.
How worse can it get from this point, really?
Between 2015 and 2019, at least 84,805 Malaysians were declared bankrupt. Based on the figure provided by the Insolvency Department, people below the age of 34 made up 26 per cent of the bankruptcy cases.
Bank Negara Malaysia found that 47 per cent of youths have high credit card debts. Most of the bankruptcy cases were mainly due to the inability to sustain instalment-based purchases, personal loans, and credit card debt.
That was in 2019. I'm sure there are more bankruptcies among young Malaysians during these trying times.
The fact remains that young Malaysians are vulnerable now more than ever.
I remember what Aziz poignantly uttered to me after I bought two packets of the frozen food from him: "My life now is like telur di hujung tanduk."
That shows how precarious his life and the lives of Gen Z and Y are right now.
The writer, a former NST journalist, is a film scriptwriter whose penchant is finding new food haunts