A single mother who has lost her job as an estate agent has called the company she worked for “callous and inhumane” after she was fired at 5.45pm on Friday with no assurances she would still be paid.

Amanda Haynes, a senior sales negotiator at Haart estate agents in Camberwell in London, claims she was given two-minutes notice for a conference call in which she was told her contract was to be cancelled immediately.

Haynes, a mother of two who is “already in dire straits” because of debt, claims that she had just been told she was in line for a promotion.

“My area manager had actually told me earlier in the day that I was doing so well they wanted me to cover the manager role at the Brixton branch from Monday with a view to seeing if I could be promoted to be the manager there full time.”

She said her team sold three properties this week and the company had started putting plans in place to do video viewings of properties.

During the call, she claims that none of the staff were allowed to ask questions during the conference and have not been told if they are getting paid this month. Others in the company have told her via WhatsApp they had been locked out of the computers without even being told they had lost their jobs.

Haynes said the way she was treated was in stark contrast to her brother, who has underlying health conditions and has been signed off for 12 weeks on full pay.

“It’s not really even about losing our jobs because we understand there is going to be casualties and the property market is one that is going to be affected by this, so we understand that. But the way they have done it so coldly and inhumanely and unprofessionally is disgraceful.

“In a time like this, when people are meant to be pulling together and they aren’t even giving us two minutes notice and there isn’t even a ‘thank you’ or a ‘sorry’ or ‘rest assured you will all be looked after’ after all the money we made for them.

“They didn’t need to do it like this. They could have done it in a way that was kind to their staff.”

Haart has not responded to a request for comment on this story.

Haynes is not the only one to have been laid off in similar circumstances. Stories are flooding social media, including news that Cineworld in Liverpool let go of more than 50 staff who were eligible for sick pay.

There have also been calls for the government to do more to help those who are self-employed.

While it plans to underwrite the wages of millions of workers, the measures announced on Friday did not cover freelancers, contractors and the self-employed.

The Treasury chief secretary, Stephen Barclay, said providing protection for the incomes of the self-employed during the coronavirus outbreak would be “operationally” difficult to deliver.

The self-employed would benefit from measures such as the deferral of self-assessment tax requirements, the holidays for mortgage payers and the strengthening of the welfare “safety net”, he said.

“We are looking at operationally what we can roll out to people,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“The main thing we have done is two-fold: it is to support the economy as a whole, because the best thing for people who are self-employed as for all people is to sustain the economy and ensure that we can return with those viable businesses, and alongside that, strengthen the safety net.

“So we have increased the allowance on universal credit, we have made it available from day one, we have removed the minimum income floor so if people who are self-employed are working less than 35 hours in a week they are not penalised within the benefits system.”

Pressed on whether the government would come forward with measures specifically for the self-employed, he said: “I come back to this underlying point about operationally what is difficult to do and what can be delivered to the timescales we are working to.”