From what I read out of this it's more the attitude of the FD-staff that ticked the OP off, and I would be straight with him on that. It seems that the usual "let me see if I can work this out with you" attitude and the final "I am very sorry, I did all I could but there is nothing I can do" was completely missing and replaced by a "I am busy, get the hell off" response, and such a response would have me go ballistic.

And honestly I have a hard time to believe that at the designated Check-in time all rooms closer to the convention area were already assigned AND their keys handed over to the occupying guests. So it certainly would have been some legwork but far from impossible to accomodate such a request. Of course that may have only postponed the same problem with another guest, but then it would have been genuinely impossible and at that most probably substantial later time could be communicated to that person more reasonably.

So with these two things I'd be working my way up the management food-chain at the property, and I would be surprised if I'd need to go above the FD-manager to get a room in my desired location...

Greetings - Dirk

P.S.: In regard to "Gold is pretty easy": Please note that there are lots of areas that have no credit-card available where people must do the full 50 nights at Marriott to achieve that status, and that means an average of one night per week of the year at a Marriott-property, and no Fairfield Inns and their sisters available (Courtyard as the lowest brand in Europe e.g.). Also rollover-nights are only of limited use once you have Gold status since you must stay over 50 nights in the respective year to roll over any night into the next...