The Many Jobs of Grover

Michael Wermuth – Grover is perhaps the hardest-working Muppet of all time (with the possible exception of the Doozers). So today let’s take a look at a small selection of Grover’s many jobs over the years.

Waiter – Grover’s most frequent job is that of a waiter at Charlie’s Restaurant. His regular customer there is Mr. Johnson, who gets frustrated with Grover’s service. If he orders alphabet soup, it’ll be missing letters. If he wants the big hamburger, Grover will try to talk him into getting a few small hamburgers instead (albeit for a good reason). If the place is out of everything but milk, they’ll still be out of glasses. But while Mr. Johnson tends to blame Grover for the bad service, it’s clearly not always Grover’s fault. After all, Grover isn’t the boss, so it’s (likely) not his fault if there’s an odd policy like only being allowed to serve foods with the “CH” sound on Charlie’s birthday or only being allowed to give the customer what he wants if the waiter can come up with a rhyme with that order, and it’s definitely not his fault if the restaurant runs out of what the customer wants (which has happened quite a bit). Besides Mr. Johnson, Grover has been known to have also served The Count, Cookie Monster, Simon Soundman, and an entire family celebrating a relatives birthday.

Mail Man – During the years when The Fix-It Shop was the Mail-It Shop, Grover was hired to deliver mail. In one “Letter of the Day” segment, Cookie Monster mails the letter of the day cookie away in order to stop himself from eating it, but Grover ends up delivering it back because Cookie Monster mailed it to himself.

Prior to his job at the Mail-It Shop, Grover had previous experience in delivering. On a couple of occasions Grover had delivered singing telegrams to Mr. Johnson (and most of them were meant for different people), delivered a number of New Years-related items to Elmo in Sesame Street Stays Up Late, and was once a delivery monster for Speedy Pizza.

Professor – Grover has sometimes been known as Professor Grover, teaching subjects to students and the audience, but frequently getting facts wrong. He has given lectures on body parts such as the head and legs (both with the help of Maria), talked to his class about school (while in school, obviously), explained the Spanish Word of the Day many times (including such words as Escuela, Libro, and Zapato), and perhaps most famously gave a lecture on baths, believing that all you need is soap and the bath tub, forgetting about the water.

Camp Counselor – Grover has been a camp counselor at Camp Wannagohoma (and led a group of kids on a camping trip at Monster State Park in Sing-Along Earth Songs). Similar to his professor role, Grover often gets things wrong and corrected by the kids, in this case he gets the names of various things found in nature wrong.

Salesman – As a door-to-door salesman, his most frequent customer, surprisingly, is not Mr. Johnson (though he did once try to sell Mr. Johnson a wig). Instead, his most frequent customer is Kermit the Frog. Unfortunately, most of the items he sells – including earmuffs, nose warmers, tooth brushes, and hair supplies – are for body parts that frogs don’t have, but there was one occasion when he tried to sell Kermit a machine that makes weather. Kermit didn’t buy the weather, but he did buy an umbrella to protect himself from the rain.

Driver – Grover has been a taxi driver, bus driver, and limo driver, and in most cases he’s unaware of how to get to his customers desired locations (it’s one thing when he’s a taxi driver unsure how to get there, but when he’s driving the bus to Cincinnati and asks know how to get there…). In Elmopalooza, he got the adults lost because he thought his limo had a video map (it was actually a video game).

Elevator Operator – Grover has been an elevator operator on a few occasions, where he has made his patrons go in and out, taught the difference between front and back, and once counted them to make sure they didn’t exceed the maximum number of people allowed on the elevator (too bad he forgot to count himself).

Actor – Grover has acted on many occasions, and for the most part acting seems to be the job he gets right the most. He has acted in more installments of Monsterpiece Theater than anyone else, having starred in such segments as “Chariots of Fur” (with Herry Monster), “The King and I”, “Much Ado About Nothing” (with Mr. Johnson), and “Waiting for Elmo” (with Telly Monster). Later on, he starred in Monster Movie Classics’ production of “A Streetcar Named Monster”. He’s also starred in the medical drama “A’s Anatomy” and helped historical figures in two editions of The American Revolution.

But his performances have not always been perfect. When he appeared in Prairie Dawn’s pageant “Let’s Make a Face”, he messes up on his main line (no wonder Prairie made him stage manager for “The Four Seasons”). When he starred in a production of “Singing in the Rain”, the wrong weather messed up his performance, only for him to leave the set when the right weather came in. And when he played the title role in the theatrical production “Spider-Monster: The Musical”, he was unable to fly, constantly injuring Mr. Johnson (the only audience member that night) in the process.

And Grover has had a lot more jobs than just all this, including news dealer, game show host, photographer, gym trainer, flight attendant, plumber, and hot dog vendor, but his resume is just too long for us to cover all of his jobs. By the way, if anybody reading this is hiring, I hear that Grover is looking for another job.