Magento unable to retrieve attributes on store view

I understand the basic concept of global, website and store scope. We are developing a magento webshop that has 1 website and 2 stores. We have created an attribute called product_status which is in the 'store view' scope.

Issue I'm having is the following:

When I go to a certain product in the magento backoffice , select a certain store from the dropdown menu and set the product_status for this product to let's say "Promotion", I am unable to retrieve this value using the following code on list view (list.phtml):

$_product->getAttributeText('status_type')

Afterward when I do the same, but then for default values, the value IS showing! Afterward when I reset the product_status on default value, this time it WILL wo开发者_Go百科rk per store.

It's pretty weird that you have to set default values before you can set it per store -_-

Anyone got an idea on a work-around for this issue? Am I doing something wrong?

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Figured it out, all you have to do is put the attribute as required and it will force magento to load it on every page that involves products ;)