Northwest Lobby Onlookers

A collective of White House staffers and visitors who occupy the Northwest lobby and serve as an immediate public audience for daily passage and interpersonal display. They register shifts in mood and behavior among senior staff—cataloguing small ruptures as potential institutional alarms—and their visible confusion or alarm refracts back onto protagonists, escalating social stakes. They function narratively as an emotional barometer and social mirror: quick to notice odd affect, prone to collective unease, and instrumental in converting private oddities into public concern that prompts follow-up from central characters.