Growth
Like any other discovery, there's always a few laws that have to be understood. Morphy's Law states that anything that can transform will transform at the worst possible time. Knowing that, we have decided to experiment with rule bending. One of our happy accidents led to the renovation of what is now known as the Half-ateria. To celebrate, we decided to bring our food to life.
One of our maintenance bots managed to install a short story into our overhead projectors and modify it for lunchtime recreation. Now the scientists have to survive some robot's idea of an HR meeting.
Step 1) Restricting any possible damage from reaching other parts of the lab required focusing on the messiest problems first.
Not to mention, if they decide to attack, we wouldn't want to experiment further.