Lunch is also a really important part of my job. I run the IT department for a fairly small company (~200 employees).

Going to lunch with people affords me the opportunity to hear them complain about their job. Sometimes, although they might not realize, their complaints are things that I can fix for them. They're my best source of ideas for projects.

"GUH! I keep asking $so_and_so for new $office_supply, but I guess we're out of it, WTF!?"

Hmm...maybe we need an inventory tracking system for the office supplies?

"$so_and_so is gone today, and she is the only one with the $excel_spreadsheet on her computer. It sucks because I can't get ahold of her and I need $excel_spreadsheet!"

Well how can we solve this? Why aren't they using the file server for this stuff?

And so on.