Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an ambitious, but lazy, man, esp. a government career man, a sycophant.

1924		Wash. Post 18 Jan. 1: Hugh Gibson, our minister to Finland, advocates chasing the tea hounds and cookie pushers out of the diplomatic service, but who, then would compete in the matrimonial market with foreign noblemen for our heiresses?
1930		J.T. Farrell ‘A Hell of a Good Time’ in Short Stories (1937) 203: These modern girls, they’re the real stuff, and they need the likes of what we used to be. Take my Mary, she always says she wouldn’t trade me for these cookie-dusters that try to sneak feels off her while she’s serving them lunch.
1946		Word Study May 2: State Department officials have long been called ‘cookie-pushers’ [W&F].
1978		S. Longstreet Straw Boss (1979) 280: He’s been sent by the cookie pushers in the State Department.
2003		Indep. Rev. 1 Oct. 5: Already installed some oikish little cookie-pusher in my office.

2. a young man who errs on the ‘feminine side of life’ – tea parties, conversation, the niceties of dress and of gossip, art rather than sport etc; thus cookie-pushing n.

1922		Morn. Tulsa Dly World (OK) 15 Oct. 36/7: We are sorry to say that troop No. 24 brags of having two cookie pushers like Pete Fowler and Dan Corkin.
1927		M.C. McPhee ‘College Sl.’ in AS III:2 131: A student who spends much time in the society of the ladies is ‘a heavy-cake’ or ‘a tea hound’. He is given to ‘cookie-pushing,’ or ‘lounge-lizarding’.
1934		Weseen Dict. Amer. Sl. 178: [College] Cookie pusher – male student who seeks female companions; a tea hound.
1946		F. Eikel Jr ‘An Aggie Vocab. of Sl.’ in AS XXI:1 31: cookie pusher, n. ‘Male student at a co-ed college.’ [...] ‘pleasure-seeker; fashionable person; dandy, or dude; ladies’ man’.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1982		P. Theroux London Embassy 73: They are often jocks who regard more thoughtful men as cookie-pushers.

3. a waitress.

1936		D. McCarthy Mossborn n.p.: Cookie pushers. A waitress [HDAS].
1950		in DARE.
1958		McCulloch Woods Words 38: Cookie pusher – a hasher.