Meet 23-year-old Maya Moore, a financial operations analyst who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Here she is pictured with her twin sister Vera, who is on the right.
Moore told BuzzFeed News this was her first year at a new company so when she heard about the firm's festive 'ugly sweater' contest, she wanted to go all out to impress her co-workers and, of course, win. She did a pretty stellar job.
She was inspired to make her tree-like jumper after seeing a similar idea on Pinterest.
"It took about four hours to make. I was up until midnight and my boyfriend was super annoyed that I wasn't responding to his texts or calls but I was in my zone," Moore said. "I haven't had the opportunity to be creative since college to be honest, so I was pretty excited."
Despite her incredible effort, Moore came second in the contest. She sent a joke tweet about her disappointment and it quickly went viral. It gained over 66,400 likes and 25,000 retweets.
People were seriously impressed by Moore's creativity.
@mayamorena_ @ImJustCeej But you freaking WON!
But mainly people were annoyed that Moore came second.
Some described it as "injustice".
Moore said the actual winner was a co-worker who wore a "pretty ugly sweater", with the slogan 'I sleigh' written on it.
She added: "We were judged on ugliness, creativity, and presentation. I will say I was lacking in the presentation category because I'm not very funny or witty and had trouble coming up with a funny back story behind the tree sweater."
Although she came second, people really appreciated her efforts and someone even created a cute certificate for her.
"I had fun and won second place prize so I'm not upset at all, Moore said. "Plus I'm the people's champ according to my current Twitter mentions lol."
She said she isn't entirely sure what she'll do for next year's contest, but insisted she will be "back with a vengeance for sure".
