Just wanted to chime in and say that OP’s experience is exactly how it would go down at my workplace too, despite the deluge of downvotes they’re getting, and I also likely would have looked at alternatives instead of proposing it, for the sake of my professional reputation. I think it’s likely true for a ton of people.

That’s not to say that people aren’t being over-serious if they see the original branding and balk at it, but that’s out of OP’s hands.

There’s an optional “tabbed interface” in View > User Interface that’s a lot like the Office ribbon. Like the Office ribbon, it has context-sensitive additional tabs, and you can enable a compact version that shows less but takes up less vertical space.

I’ve not had a need for LibreOffice for a while, but it certainly looks a lot less cluttered than the default old-school toolbars.