"at all" in affirmative sentences without non-assertive words

Solution 1:

It wouldn't be licensed without the surrounding "John is grateful..." clause.

The following is unacceptable or ungrammatical for me (so marked with a preceding asterisk * per common convention):

• *John has a job at all.

It isn't completely unimaginable to me that an English speaker could produce the above sentence, but my expectation upon hearing or reading it would be that the speaker might also ignore licensing requirements for any other negative polarity items. (I've encountered a few people online who seem to have this as a habit; I think it may have originally been a deliberately unusual stylistic feature that some people adopted in adulthood.)

I feel that "ever" can also be licensed by grateful, as in "I'm grateful to have ever met you"/"grateful that I ever met you".

However, "any longer/any more" doesn't seem to be licensed: *"I'm grateful to have a job any more". I'm not sure why it is different from the other two NPIs mentioned.