My preferred method if this were to happen to me would be: 1. Receive notification not in person 2. Have the option of discussing with my manager in person after I had a chance to process it.

Big news like that takes a while to process. I believe I've read before that if you are firing someone, you are supposed to tell them and then not say anything else until they do. That seems unnecessarily cruel to the person getting the bad news since it puts them very emotionally on the spot.

But I've never been on either side of that, so who knows.