This seems common in the industry at large. At my job it's impossible to fix an issue unless someone specifically puts in a ticket for it. I look at all the bugs in the code taunting me. Little landmines either nobody has stepped on yet or was too lazy to write a ticket for. Some tickets languish for years in the tracking system we use until the almighty scrum master doles it out. I am in hell.

At my previous client, the scrum master didn't decide 100% of the work, we could pick a small percentage of technical items to work on.

The scrum master decides the work? Why has agile become such a mess?

It’s been a while, I actually forgot a bit about the process, and I got it mixed up. Point being: tasks without a clear business driver were regularly brought into the sprint by devs.

Other people choose their own tasks off the backlog. I chose my own and got a talking to. :)

Our lead says that all work must come from the scrum master but in practice it is selectively enforced.