cfif database issue

I know it's already been mentioned, but you might want to try:
<cfif not len(lgetpeople.lunch_out_time)>

I just ran into this yesterday, I wanted to do something if a date field was blank. NEQ will not work if it's a date / time field.

When I am confronted with these types of problems, my approach is:
if somevariable is or is not some expected value
code
cfelse
look at the variable. In your case, it would be
<cfump var="a#getpeople.lunch_out_time#b">

If you get anything between the a and b, including whitespace, you'll know why your code didn't perform as expected.

I'm not sure, but be aware that there could be hidden characters in there such as a space. The next best step to take is to be a bit more strict with your checking and validation. Try the following code and see what you get:

<cfif trim(getpeople.lunch_out_time) NEQ "" AND len(trim(getpeople.lunch_out_time)) GT 0>
<cfset time2 = TimeFormat(getpeople.lunch_out_time, "hh:mm")>
<cfset time3 = DateAdd("h", 1, time2)>
<cfset time4 = DateAdd("n", 15, time3)>
<cfset time5 = Timeformat(time4, "hh:mm")>
<cfset time55 = Now()>
<cfset time555 = DateAdd("h", 1, time55)>
<cfset time6 = Timeformat(time555, "hh:mm")>
<cfif time5 LTE time6 AND getpeople.emailed EQ 2>

A combination of TRIM and LEN functions on your variable might do the trick. Trim, trims the text and len will check the length of the string.

Also be aware that NULL is different from BLANK. Blank could have a value such as a space or other hidden character, where as NULL is no value at all - nothing. These are very different from each other.

Good luck,
Mikey.