“A cookie would go great with your beverage.” The sticker stares up at me from the lid of the soy latte I just purchased at the Barnes & Noble café.

This is added to the fact that the barista just asked me if I would like a warm chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven. It is 9:00pm on a Friday night and I already had a mini ice cream sandwich after dinner. In no way do I need a cookie. But the barista didn’t ask me if I needed a cookie. She asked me if I wanted a cookie. Well, of course I do, I thought. But I politely said “no thank you,” and went on my merrily smug way (I resisted temptation!), only to come face-to-face with the lid of my cup.

And as I sit here writing about this, staring at the blue sticker glaring back at me like the words on the tea cake in Alice in Wonderland, I still very much want that dang chocolate chip cookie. I can almost taste its sweet and salty chocolatey goodness.

Mindfully, I take a long sip of my soy latte.

I can’t blame my frustration on the barista, as much as I would like to. It’s her job to up-sell; I remember well the days I spent as catering manager of a restaurant convincing customers that our cookies and sweet tea were just going to make [them] so happy!  (I’m from Dallas, please excuse my palate.) Yet there is something to be said for the culture we have created and continue to nurture with marketing ploys like cookie-hawking stickers despite the ever-growing problem of obesity and overweight in our country.

I have to take personal responsibility – I admittedly spend too much time in cafés, where I know I will be surrounded by baked goods. This is a type of environment that I choose because I enjoy what it provides: the sounds, the people, the smell of coffee brewing and, yes--cookies baking. I make a choice to enter and to linger, so I shouldn’t be surprised to find myself confronted with such temptations.

The other morning I was in line at Starbucks (since moving to Seattle I have swapped sweet tea for coffee), staring down the cinnamon scones in their case. I wasn’t planning on purchasing a cinnamon scone; I was going to buy a banana to accompany my coffee. But when the cashier called out “banana,” the woman behind the snack case shouted back, “cinnamon scone?” I kid you not. She read my mind. Well, either that or she had seen me salivating on the snack case.

We all shared a laugh when I admitted that the cinnamon scone was indeed what I really wanted. But I stuck to my healthy-behavior-toting guns and bought my banana. It satisfied my hunger very well, thank you very much.

Certainly a lot better than the cinnamon scone that I consumed the next morning after caving to my craving.

But today was another day. I’ve finished my soy latte and I am satisfied. I’ve spent the last hour engaged in writing – my favorite pastime – and now, as I hear the barista ask yet another customer “would you like a cookie, fresh from the oven?” I can honestly say that I would not. I’m fine, thanks.