Sort column on meta key and meta value

Have you tried changing your orderby value to meta_value, rather than meta_value_num in your status_column_orderby function?
This has always worked for me in the past. I’m assuming we are dealing with words, not numbers, since you said “alphabetically” in your question.
meta_value is for letters/characters, with meta_value_num reserved for… you guessed it… numbers.