Nolarchy

This was a new one to me, and I swear I am not making this up. I don't have as many stays as many on this forum, but I've certainly stayed in my share of hotels from Budget Inns to the Ritz, and I have never experienced this situation. I finally got to the Springhill Suites in Shreveport, Louisiana last night around 11, and got checked in. I go to my room, seems nice enough, but there's no shampoo. Conditioner yes, shampoo no. Whatever, I figure, I'm sure housekeeping just forgot to put one in. Off I go to the front desk, where the nice fellow behind the counter explains that the hotel is out of shampoo. I was speechless for a few seconds while processing this information. I said pardon? He replied that he was very sorry, but he wouldn't be able to get me shampoo until housekeeping arrived in the morning. When I asked what time that would be, he said around 7 or 8 AM. I explained that since I had an 8 AM meeting, that wasn't going to work for me. I then asked if perhaps there was shampoo in a room that wasn't currently occupied. He said he had thought of that, but there wasn't any shampoo in those rooms either. At this point, with no possible resolution (I had been driving for 7.5 hours and I certainly wasn't going to go try to find a drug store that was open), I went back to my room. This morning I had the pleasure of washing my hair with bar soap.

How in the world could this possibly happen? The desk agent's response suggested to me that there was shampoo in the building, he just couldn't access it. Am I wrong to be a bit miffed by this? I had a pretty important meeting, and wanted to look my best. Washing my hair with bar soap did not fit into my plans. What does this say about how the hotel feels about its guests? If they were really, really out of shampoo, why not send somebody to Walgreens to buy up a bunch of travel sizes? Or alternately, call the Holiday Inn Express, which was directly across the street, and buy some shampoo off of them. At least then we'd have something. Perhaps I need to carry a hotel-sized bottle of shampoo with me, but honestly, never in my wildest dreams did I think this would occur. Shampoo is a pretty basic hotel accommodation.

I have gold status with Marriott, and I certainly will email them about this situation, but I'm unsure a) how upset to be about this and b) what I should say in the email. Was I annoyed, sure, but it's not like the room was a mess, or they lost my reservation, or there was construction going on all night; I haven't lost perspective. That being said, as a business traveler, I'm not in Shreveport for vacation, and I want to not worry about my ability to wash my hair in what is supposed to be a upper-middle (to me at least) tier hotel. It strikes me that this is rather disrespectful towards your guests.

Is this issue worthy of compensation? If so, what the heck do I ask for?

Thanks for any input.