Nicola Coughlan has revealed how RIP.ie saved her bacon when she used to work at an optician’s office.
The Galway-born Derry girl has seen her career go from strength to strength, with her hosting Saturday Night Live UK last week in an episode that was beloved by fans.
While, of course, many Hollywood stars work the ‘regular’ jobs before making it big, Nicola is no exception — having previously worked at an optician’s in Galway before her first big break.
Given that a lot of clientele at opticians’ offices would be on the older side age-wise, Nicola revealed that during her tenure, she would call patients to book their next eye-tests — only to learn that they had passed on.
‘A lot of people who would come in are quite elderly,’ Nicola said on the Dish podcast. ‘So you’d look on their form, and ring, and be like: “Hello, John is due his eye test.” And then, John’s widow would be like: “my husband died.”‘
While many would probably want to crawl into a hole, Nicola decided to improvise, adapt, and overcome with a little help from the country’s favourite website.
‘It happened to me enough times where I was like, “right, I can’t do this anymore — I need to figure out a system.”
‘So in Ireland, there’s a website — it’s my mum’s favourite website — called RIP.ie,’ Nicola explained to laughs.
‘So what I started to do was, if someone’s date of birth, that was… a little bit further into the past… I would go “I’m gonna put them into RIP.ie.” So I’d pop in their details, and if they’d passed away, I would print the page out, and I would staple it onto the [form] and put it in the back office.’
While the system did work, Nicola quickly found out that there was one cohort that would always be available for their eye tests, no matter how old they were.
”We got a lot of nuns coming in [to the office]. So you’d be like, “Sister Ignatius, born 1932.” I’d see 1932, and go into RIP.ie… they’re always alive.
‘Nuns are immortal.’
