The status menu item is only available for Airport and Bluetooth, I think. If you connect via Ethernet, you're connected permanently and you don't need a status menu.
You should be able to see the status of your connection in the left part of the Network pref pane, in System Preferences. From there you can add/remove and enable/disable connection methods (Airport, Ethernet, Bluetooth, Firewire) and reorder them by drag and drop. Once your Ethernet connection is set from there and working, you shouldn't have to worry about it.