Situation #1

Use a Derived Table (Or a Common Table Expression [CTE] in SqlServer 2005) and lose the variables:

SELECT

  t1.col1, t1.col2, dt.col1, dt.col2 

FROM

  Customer t1

CROSS JOIN 

 (

    SELECT TOP 1 col1, col2

    FROM GeneralInfo t2

 \) dt

WHERE t1.status > 0

Situation #2

Discussion is incomplete without mentioning effect of concurrency & transaction isolation. Yes, splitting into smaller queries may reduce lock hold time and reduce contention, but what does that gain if the end result is *different* than 1 large statement, because other processes changed data between the steps of a broken out process ?