The 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' meme is inspired by the beloved 1985 children's book by Laura Numeroff, which follows a circular tale of a mouse whose increasingly demanding requests lead to an endless cycle of chores. In internet culture, the template serves as a visual metaphor for the 'slippery slope' fallacy or the concept of 'scope creep' in professional environments. Users adapt the book's cover or its distinct illustration style to mock situations where a small, seemingly innocent request quickly spirals into an overwhelming series of unintended consequences. It is widely used in tech circles to describe feature bloat and in office humor to highlight how one task inevitably leads to ten more.