I'd rather have some warning and some hint as to what type of thing has gone horribly wrong, and I don't mind from whom. Sudden bad news can lead to the embarrassment of fainting, or the extra fright of heart-going-mad.

I agree with feanelwa that getting bad news online is useful.

> I agree with feanelwa that getting bad news online is useful.

Except when being dumped by email ;/

Email is probably better than in front of a class you are teaching, or while trying to hide silently from prowling Nazis, or on a plane on the way to your honeymoon, or while holding a forehead-sized rubber stamp saying "I blow goats" with permanent ink all over it when your soon to be ex partner is an undertaker with ten funerals to do in the next week and all his colleagues off sick, or while trying to land a 747 full of screaming passengers with a stuck undercarriage and one engine. None of these things have happened to me, fortunately.