It shouldn't matter. I should be able to walk into any att corporate store and buy any phone outright.
That isn't how it works. Your purchase is at Atts discretion. They could deny it for any reason except demographic ones. (E.g. Race, sex, etc)
The phones sold are subsidized for a contract, not only meant for a contract. If a district store decides to change it's policies that att enforces because it represents att as corporate store it needs to be the same across the board.
No it doesn't. Retail corporations give district managers wide discretion when it comes to things like high demand product. If a district manager is seeing high demand for a device, they can tell their stores not to sell it unless a contract is attached.
Example: I work as a manager for a sporting goods retailer. I work in the Chicago market, and the Blackhawks won the Stanley cup a few weeks back. For that apparel, the three district managers in our market decided what the purchase limit was for the hats (which are always a hot seller), and based those decisions on the amount of stock each of their districts were getting. My districts was two; the district that covers the city allowed one. Our corporate office had no input on that, and they supported the DMs decisions completely.
The manager is lucky he didn't get fired, the op could have sued for discrimination easily and won because he was a paying customer and the manager refused to serve him against policy for some unknown reason. Ppl sue for a lot less and win.
from what ever phone I feel like using today.
Something tells me you haven't worked in retail. A manager wouldn't get fired over something like this. The manager would have gotten fired if he gave the OP the same attitude right back, but he didn't.
The OP also could not have sued for discrimination because there wasn't any. It is irrelevant that the OP was a paying customer, because the store has no obligation to sell him something. If stock was constrained so they limited sales to just contract customers, that is a legitimate and justifiable reason for not allowing the sale.