I've used Windows all my life. I had a rig running 2000 and then upgraded to XP, my moms PC ran Win 7 (which I used to do a great deal of my work on.) and my current Laptop uses Win8. It took me about a hour to learn how to use it, and a week to get used to it. Its seriously not that confusing to use.
If anything, I found Start menu replacements like Classic Shell to be annoying and harder to set up and use then the new screen itself. The only replacement I still have is Start 8 so I boot to desktop and disable the hot corners in it. The actual button just opens up the Metro search screen.
Just use the Start menu, as a start menu. Thats all.