Table Design Issue - Message Failure And New Status

Hello,

I have a table which i use to queue messages in. in this table there is a status column along with all the other message colums (ID, body, phone, time, etc). I use tinyint to express the diffrent status values (my frist question is, should i continue using tinyint, or is there some sort of enum, or another suggestion?). the value 1 means its a new message. An external process polls this table and pics up messages that are new.

Some messages fail, and so their status is changed to two. An external post process comes along and does what it needs to with messages that have status' which it handles, for example message failures, it might erase it, or change its status back to 1.

I expect to handle thousands of messages per hour. Should I create another table, which has only id and status as columns. And when a message fails I will place it in here instead of placing it in my original table. then the post process only polls this table and joins with my main table. instead of having both processes poll the single table. Would this be more efficient for sql internal seraching? since it has a smaller table to search in? or does it not make a diffrence.

Thank you.